


Eli

by Laurawrzz



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Comedy, Doctor Whump, Domestic, Fluff, Gallifrey, Hurt/Comfort, Memories, Nightmares, Time Travel, Time War Angst, War, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-07-26 06:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurawrzz/pseuds/Laurawrzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor receives a distress call from a crashing ship, but he arrives too late to save it. In the wreckage he discovers a sole survivor, a small human boy in the tight grip of his dead mother. Whilst finding him a home, the Doctor has to look after him. The problem is, he has no idea how human children work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Baths

**Author's Note:**

> Is this the first time I've posted something on AO3 whilst writing it? I think it is! :P
> 
> I don't know how long this will be or even if there's any TenWhump to be had, but we'll see where the wind takes it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor finds an orphaned little human boy.

The Doctor hated days like this.

He’d been in the TARDIS library, finally reading his book on metaphysical ergonomics that he’d been meaning to read for about half a century, when suddenly the TARDIS had alerted him to something. He’d run to the console room, and found a distress call from a passenger ship. He’d immediately made to follow it, but one slightly wrong calibration on the console had caused him to arrive too late. Now he was standing on a barren planet in amongst a blanket of debris of the destroyed, crashed ship, with scattered, dead humans that he’d arrived too late to save.

‘Hello?’ he tried, not expecting a reply. He didn’t get any. He checked anyway, but as he went from body to body, he worked out that he was at least five hours too late. The people who had died the earliest were already stiff with rigor mortis. He kept going anyway, checking each and every person until he realised with heavy hearts that forty-one people were dead, including some children.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the Doctor moaned as he took a step back, regarding the utter carnage. By his location in time and space, their style of dress and the state of the ship, he could take a pretty good guess as to who they were. Refugees, most likely fleeing from the Hax solar system’s interstellar war.

He turned back to go into the TARDIS, when suddenly he heard a cry. A child. He spun back, alert, but he couldn’t see any movement. ‘Hello?’ he tried once more.

The noise came again. It was a child, crying. He followed the call to a pile of metal, and immediately began to push it away, eventually revealing a brown-haired woman who was clearly dead from half of the roof of the ship stuck in her, staring sightlessly up at the sky whilst clinging onto a little boy. Like his dead mother, his hair was brown and his eyes blue, and he’d clearly been hurt in the crash. 

The boy spotted him, and continued to cry. The Doctor stooped down to him.

‘Hey,’ he said gently in Hax’s most common dialect. ‘I’m here to help.’

The boy didn’t reply, still crying.

‘Let’s get you out of here,’ the Doctor said, reaching up to the woman, but she was also in rigor mortis, and moving her arms to get the boy out proved difficult. Eventually he managed it, taking the boy into both arms, not letting him see the state of his mother.

The boy cried even more. A quick check told the Doctor he’d not obviously broken anything, but he’d have to scan him to be sure. 

‘I’m going to make sure you’re okay,’ he told the boy, double-checking to make sure the boy couldn’t see his mutilated mother. The child just cried as the Doctor took him away from the wreckage and into the TARDIS.

* * *

He took the boy straight to the infirmary, giving him a full, deep body scan. The results were a lot nicer than he’d been expecting, revealing that apart from a few minor cuts, bruises and some slight malnourishment, the child was in good health. To cure his malnutrition the Doctor fetched him a nutrient bar, but the child refused to eat it, just sitting there, crying. Twenty minutes later, the Doctor was still trying.

‘Please,’ the Doctor tried, not really knowing what else to say. ‘It’ll fix your malnutrition, promise.’

The child continued to cry.

The Doctor had to confess to himself that he had no idea what he was supposed to do. He didn’t have a wealth of experience with human children, not at this age. He’d dealt with teenagers; the basic rule of thumb with them was to agree with everything they said. He’d also dealt with babies; they were easy, they just slept, gurgled and threw up. But not at this age. He needed to get the toddler to eat the bar and at least tell him his name so he could stop referring to him as “the boy”, but it was clear that the boy wasn’t interested in doing what the Doctor wanted. He just wanted to cry.

‘Please, c’mon,’ the Doctor tried again, holding out the bar. The boy kept crying.

The Doctor rapidly decided he was going nowhere with this. He temporarily put the nutrient bar down, his logical Time Lord brain trying to work out what to do next. He wondered if he should hug the child. Or was that an invasion of personal space, which human children weren’t comfortable with? He should probably resist the hug, he eventually decided.

A thought struck the Doctor. ‘Wait. Can you even talk? I have no idea what age that starts.’

The boy kept crying.

‘You must talk,’ the Doctor reasoned out loud. ‘The scanner says you’re four-ish. Four-year-olds talk … right? How can you go four years without talking?’

He kept crying. The Doctor internally groaned. This was ridiculous. He was going to have to risk hugging him. He could see it coming.

‘I’m the Doctor,’ the Time Lord tried next. ‘What’s your name?’

He still cried. The Doctor decided on a slightly different approach.

‘I’m going to get you somewhere safe and away from the war. Everything’s going to be fine.’

The boy looked at him through watery eyes, but still said nothing.

‘No more bombs,’ the Doctor clarified. ‘You know what I mean?’

‘No … no … no more booming?’ the boy asked, looking around the room. The Doctor blinked slightly, a little surprised by the ridiculous high-pitch of the voice. He briefly wondered what age that stopped.

‘Yeah,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘No more booming. But I need to know your name. What’s your name?’

The boy sniffed. ‘Eli,’ he said.

‘Eli,’ the Doctor acknowledged, nodding. ‘I’m the Doctor. And you need to eat this.’ He held out the nutrient bar, trying his luck. ‘It’s really yummy,’ he assured him. Even as the word “yummy” came out of his mouth he felt like a moron, but Eli seemed to accept it and took the bar in unstable toddler hands, looking at it. The Doctor made silent wishes, watching like a hawk before Eli obediently took a bite. The Doctor internally cheered.

‘Thank you,’ Eli suddenly said politely.

‘You’re welcome,’ the Doctor replied. ‘I’ve just gotta run to the console room and get the Proclamation here. I’ll hand you over to them and they’ll get you somewhere safe. Sound good?’

Eli just shrugged, still chewing on the bar. He was getting bits of it everywhere.

Sighing a little, the Doctor left the infirmary.

* * *

He went to the console, calling up the Shadow Proclamation with a few short button flicks. A few seconds later, one of the architects appeared on the monitor.  _ ‘Doctor,’  _ she acknowledged.

‘There’s been an accident on Keela Major,’ he told her. ‘A refugee ship has crashed. There are about forty people dead.’

_ ‘Understood,’  _ the Architect replied.  _ ‘We will send out the shansheeth to perform burial rituals.’ _

‘Thanks,’ the Doctor replied, and terminated the communication. He was about to leave, when he suddenly realised he hadn’t told them about Eli. How could he forget? He turned back to the monitor, when suddenly he felt a tugging on his trousers. He yelped, panicked, until he realised it was Eli at his feet, still with the nutrient bar in one hand.

‘Blimey,’ the Doctor gasped, hand over his left heart. ‘I’ve been alone for ages, don’t do that!’

‘Mummy?’ Eli asked, pointing at the TARDIS doors.

The Doctor’s hearts simultaneously sank. ‘No, Eli. She’s not …’ He stopped himself. Not for the first time that day, he had no idea what to say. ‘She’s … she died, Eli,’ he said without his brain really agreeing to it.

Eli nodded, to the Doctor’s utmost surprise. He seemed to get it. The Doctor quickly reminded himself that the boy had come straight from a war. He probably knew what death was more than he should. The thought was a little jarring when he stared at the little human staring up at him, apparently so innocent and young.

‘Are you okay?’ the Doctor asked, unsure.

‘Yeah,’ Eli replied. ‘Who’s gonna look after me?’ 

‘I’ll find someone to take care of you,’ the Doctor replied, confused at his reaction. ‘They’ll do everything your mummy did.’

‘Til she gets back?’ Eli wondered.

The Doctor’s brow furrowed. ‘Eli … she’s died.’ He didn’t know what else to say.

‘Oh,’ Eli muttered as he finished the nutrient bar. ‘Can I play?’

The Doctor knew Eli wasn’t processing her death correctly, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. In the meantime, he had to wait for the judoon to pick him up so until then, he would have to look after Eli. Completely forgetting about alerting the Proclamation to the survivor, he considered the boy, standing there in ripped clothes, covered in dirt. 

‘Okay, I’ll clean you up,’ the Doctor decided, reaching out his hand to Eli.

‘Bath?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No!’ the little boy cried, suddenly screaming and bursting into giggles as he tore away from the Doctor, ran around the console and darted through the door to the inner rooms.

‘Eli!’ the Doctor yelled. ‘Come back!’

* * *

The Doctor had always prided himself on the fact that he could  _ really  _ run. He’d spent most of his life running. He ran from the untempered schism, his family, his House, the Lord President of Gallifrey, his commitments, duties, marriage, monsters, and even Jack. It was a flawless system, and nearly always worked. It had worked for nearly a millennium.

But in the ensuing ten minutes, the Doctor rapidly discovered that any ability he had to run was significantly less than that of a tiny human. The little boy had a deceptive amount of stamina, which he’d used, whilst giggling, to run around the corridors of the TARDIS as the Doctor had been left in the dust, gasping Eli’s name.

He had to stop outside the bedrooms, doubling over. Eli stopped at the end of the corridor grinning at him. How wasn’t he even sweating?

‘I’m seriously not chasing you anymore,’ the Doctor gasped. ‘Not fun. Not a fun game.’

Eli giggled again, poised to shoot off at any moment with a delightful look in his eyes. The Doctor groaned and sat down against the wall, still trying to get his breath back.

Eli’s face fell. He approached the Time Lord cautiously, until he was standing in front of him, his bottom lip pouting. Eli then moved forward, and hugged him.

‘Sorry, Dok-tah,’ he said in his little high-pitched voice. The Doctor couldn’t help but think just how tiny his arms were too. They couldn’t even encircle him. He sighed again, and hugged the boy in return. The boy kissed him on the cheek, and grinned at him. The Doctor’s hearts warmed a little.

It was then he suddenly heard the sounds of ships outside. Eli’s lift home. He got up with Eli in his arms and made his way to the console room, the boy clinging to his neck. He made sure the TARDIS was grounded, and stepped back out onto the planet. 

There were the ships of the judoon and shansheeth. He made sure Eli couldn’t see the carnage, and made his way up to one of the judoon.

‘S’cuse!’ the Doctor said. ‘Sorry, I found a survivor, a four-year-old human boy.’

‘Understood. Give the small human to us,’ the judoon gruffed, looking briefly at Eli, its arms outstretched. 

The Doctor obliged. Eli suddenly shrieked, crying and holding out his arms to the Doctor. That made the Doctor hesitate slightly. ‘Wait,’ he said quickly, stopping the judoon. ‘Where will you take him?’

‘We will take the small human to nearest Hax planet.’

The Doctor frowned. ‘But … they’re in the middle of a war. You can’t take him back there. That’s what they were fleeing from.’

The Doctor got the distinct feeling that if the judoon could have shrugged, it would have. ‘Any other method not appropriate to resources.’

The Doctor paused. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘I’ll … I’ll find him somewhere.’

‘Okay,’ the judoon said shortly, handed back Eli, and turned away from him.

Eli laughed happily and clung onto the Time Lord’s neck again. The Doctor, on the other hand, was wondering just how he was going to manage that.

* * *

After a few minutes of pondering inside the console room, the Doctor finally came up with a plan. He would first clean up Eli, get him some clothes and then run his DNA through the Hax database to see if he had any relatives on safe worlds. This time he maintained a firm grip on the toddler as he took him to a bathroom and opted for a shallow bath.

After twenty minutes of a very unhappy, red faced boy having a small tantrum, the Doctor and the bathroom were almost completely drenched. The Time Lord eventually managed to get him clean and dry, and left him on his bed huddled in a towel as he went to get changed into dry clothes. By the time he got back, Eli had gone.

The Doctor’s eyes shot open. ‘Eli!’ he yelped, looking frantically around the room. He immediately instigated a search, looking in the bed, in cupboards and even in drawers, until he finally realised the door was ajar. He bolted out of the room, and heard a giggle from the kitchen. He ran, skidding to a halt outside the doorway just in time to see Eli pour an entire bottle of Earth fruit juice all over himself.

‘Eli!’ the Doctor yelled, frustrated. ‘I  _ just  _ cleaned you!’

Eli turned around, and registered the Doctor. ‘Sorry,’ he said. 

‘You can’t just do bad things and say sorry, it doesn’t work like that!’ the Doctor insisted. He paused, taking a few deep breaths to calm down. ‘Right. Let’s try again. I can do this.’

He grabbed the boy before he could bolt, and took him straight back to the bathroom, the toddler wailing every step of the way.

Rule one, the Doctor decided.  _ Never  _ leave human children alone.

* * *

After another tumultuous bath and the Time Lord having to get changed for a second time, he took Eli to the wardrobe to try and find some clothes.

He hadn’t been expecting to find anything that fitted the child, but was delightfully surprised to see among the swathes of clothes that some things fitted Eli – though the Doctor was pretty sure that they weren’t originally intended for little humans. Still, he got Eli dressed into a chequered shirt, jeans and shoes, and took him back to the console room.

Eli obediently sat on the chair sucking his thumb as the Doctor checked his DNA against the Hax database. It didn’t take long to find him.

**Elijah Ke-to** **[deceased … pending information]**

**Born 46.2.0-9**

**Mother: Sarah Ke-to [deceased … pending information]. Father: Jed Ke-to [deceased 46.6.1-8].**

**Species: Homo sapiens 96%, Kergalan 4%.**

The Doctor checked the relatives, and found a huge list of people. He scrolled his way down, but every single name was suffixed by the word “deceased”, most of them extremely recently. Victims of the war.

He realised very quickly that Eli had absolutely no one left in the entire universe.

The Doctor turned back to the boy, still sitting there sucking his thumb. ‘Alone,’ the Doctor mused out loud sadly. ‘Me too. Don’t worry, I’ll find you somewhere.’

Eli pulled his thumb out of his mouth, and smiled at the Time Lord. The Doctor smiled back. Eli then yawned, stretching widely. He slipped off of the chair and hugged the Doctor’s leg. It was apparent that the search for a home couldn’t continue until Eli had slept. The Doctor would have to look after him for a while.

The Doctor thought briefly about calling someone for help. He thought about Martha, who would want to submit the boy to a thousand tests. He thought about Sarah, who probably wouldn’t appreciate a small, hyperactive child running around her house. He thought about Jack, and the numerous inappropriate jokes about which planet the Doctor had “got it off” on.

‘Nah,’ the Doctor decided out loud, looking at Eli. ‘Right. I can do this. You’re a human, basically, and I know humans. All grown-up humans need is sleep, food, something to amuse them, and some attention. Right? So you need that too. Just in smaller doses. So. Sleep.’

The Doctor paused, thinking. He had plenty of bedrooms in the TARDIS, but he was pretty sure that none of them were to Eli’s scale. He moved to the console and hit a few buttons. Eli stayed faithfully by his feet. Within a few minutes, he’d created a new room; a small-scale version of a typical human bedroom.

‘Done!’ he announced proudly when he’d finished, drawing back from the screen. ‘Let’s get you to bed.’


	2. Balloons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is forced to go shopping on Earth, before he tries to help Eli understand his mother's death.

After a pointless ten minutes of searching, the Doctor accepted the fact that he didn’t have anything that qualified as pyjamas for Eli in the TARDIS, so he just undressed the boy and settled him in the small-scale bed. Eli yawned again, curling up under the covers.

‘G’night,’ the Doctor said, about to leave, when Eli stopped him.

‘No,’ the little boy said. ‘Story? Please?’

‘You want a story?’ the Doctor repeated, bewildered.

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh.’ The Doctor paused, momentarily struggling. Without deciding anything he walked back to the bed and took a seat, pulling up his legs. ‘Right, okay. What kinda story?’

Eli shrugged.

‘Give me a ballpark,’ the Doctor encouraged. ‘Um, action? Romance? Film noir?’

Eli shrugged again.

The Doctor sighed. ‘Thanks. Right. Um ... A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a Jedi named Luke Skywalker …’

* * *

After Eli had fallen asleep, the Doctor decided he had to make some headway into his to do list. The next item to tackle was food.

He went to the kitchen, wondering if he had any human food leftover from when Donna was aboard. He searched high and low, but came up with next to nothing asides one piece of bread in back, which was so old he realised it was more than likely to be the life-form he’d been picking up on the scanner for the past few months, which was somewhat of a relief.

He turned his attentions to his alien food stocks, wondering if Eli would eat that, when a thought struck him. What did little humans actually  _ eat? _

The question was such a poser that he had to get a cup of tea and sit down to think about it rationally. He knew the human female lactated and exceptionally small humans ate that, but that would be somewhat problematic, as he couldn’t lactate. But that was only the  _ really  _ little humans that did that. Eli had teeth. Maybe that meant he ate solid food? Maybe not steak, but something hard at least.

He quickly realised, with a deep sense of foreboding, that he was going to have to go shopping.

* * *

The TARDIS landed in an alley near a Tesco superstore on a cold Wednesday afternoon. Before he left the ship, the Doctor checked Eli and locked the bedroom door to make sure the boy wasn’t going anywhere, but he probably wasn’t – he was sleeping like a log. He then straightened himself up, stepped out of the TARDIS doors and for the first time in his entire life, intentionally stepped into Tesco in order to make some purchases.

For a few seconds he just stood there in the entrance, wondering what direction to head. He was somewhat unfamiliar with the basic rules of a shop. After a few moments of searching, he finally saw a sign in the distance hanging from the ceiling with the word “children” written on it. He started forward, and had to stumble to avoid a woman wheeling a pushchair with some screaming children in tow. 

‘Watch where you’re going!’ the woman snapped.

‘Sorry!’ the Doctor replied, his eyes furiously scanning her myriad of children, but none of them were Eli’s age, so the contents of her basket would be useless. He held up his hand, apologised again, and walked away.

As he walked, he noticed that everyone around him seemed to be carrying baskets, so he thought he should get one too. He darted back, retrieved one, and headed towards the children’s section again. On the way he tried to log what was in every parent’s basket, but that was impossible. He reached the aisle, and found himself staring into an abyss of nappies.

Nappies, he realised. Nappies were a thing. Did Eli need nappies? For a second or two he just stood at the head of the aisle, staring at Pamper’s Premium, wondering. Eli hadn’t been wearing a nappy. Did that mean he used a toilet? When exactly did the human child stop using nappies and start using toilets? Was it instinct?

Still, better safe than sorry. He grabbed a few random packs and shoved them in his basket, which nearly filled it.

He continued down the aisle, past some skin products and more packets of things with smiling babies on them, until he reached the food. The colours were like an explosion in a paint factory, and yet more smiling babies were on the packets, gazing at him like an army of happiness charging towards him from the shelves. None of the pictures looked like Eli.

After a little bit of examination, he eventually worked out that he needed to pay attention to the ages on the packets. He retrieved a second basket, and took four of every bit of food labelled for three-year-olds, reasoning to himself that there couldn’t be  _ that  _ much difference between three and four. After the shelf was all-but cleared, he dragged his baskets in the direction everyone else was heading – a till. He joined the queue, and noted he was getting some weird looks as he advanced.

‘How many children do you  _ have?’  _ a man asked rudely from behind him, turning up his nose.

‘Thirty-six,’ the Doctor replied without hesitation, and took his turn at the till. The shop assistant was also looking at him weirdly as she spent the next ten minutes beeping through every item. He noticed that everyone else at the tills were packing their things into plastic bags, so he did too. He ended up with five stuffed bags.

‘That’s £214.25, please,’ she said politely.

He flashed his psychic paper at her. Whatever it said, the assistant apologised, ran a card through her till and smiled. ‘Have a nice day.’

‘I’m trying to,’ the Doctor assured her, and walked out of the store with bags all the way up his arms. He was about to head back to the TARDIS, when he saw a Mothercare directly opposite him. It had the word “mother” in it, he thought, so that was probably where he ought to be.

* * *

Mothercare was exceptionally brightly-coloured, and full of cute things like huge bears and plastic toys. In the background he could hear a little music box chiming, and the shrieks of a happy little girl in the company of her mother. Still with five bags on his arms, he grabbed another basket and walked up to the nearest shelf. He heaped a load of toys in, until finally someone in a uniform noticed him.

‘Can I help you?’ a lady asked politely, smiling.

‘No … Wait, yes,’ he realised. ‘Do you have some sort of book section?’ 

The shop assistant beamed, looking at his basket and his Tesco bags. ‘New dad?’

‘You could say that,’ the Doctor supposed.

‘Our books are over here,’ she said, gesturing and setting off. He followed. ‘So, how long until the little one? Do you know the gender?’

‘Pardon? Oh, he’s a boy.’

‘When’s he due?’ the shop assistant asked.

The Doctor balked a little. ‘Oh, no, I’m not … he’s …’ He stopped himself, rapidly realising that explaining the situation would be far more trouble than lying. ‘He’s four. And he’s outrunning me,’ he added.

The girl laughed. ‘Oh, they do that. What’s his name?’

‘Eli.’

‘Oh, that’s a name you never hear,’ the girl said, and stopped in front of a shelf of books. ‘I love it. Here you go.’

‘Thanks,’ the Doctor said.

‘There are some good books for mummy over here,’ she said, pointing to their right. She was about to say something else, when she caught the Doctor’s rapid head-shake. Her face dropped. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t …’

‘It’s okay,’ the Doctor assured her, flashing her a smile, looking at the books. He ideally wanted something big and chunky as a guide for parenting a four-year-old refugee found in a wrecked spaceship, but he could only see books made of card about elephants and balloons.

‘I really hope you don’t mind me saying, but I think what you’re doing is admirable,’ she said suddenly.

The Doctor looked up, confused. ‘Um, what?’

‘Single parenting.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Thanks,’ the Doctor said with another smile, dearly wanting her to go away. She didn’t. So he stepped back, trying to look as though he was thinking hard about his purchase. Finally she went away, but he did notice that the burly security guard in the corner was staring at him.

No use. He turned to go to the till with his toys, when he noticed a book he’d missed, fallen onto the floor. It was about helping children to cope with death.

He picked it up and went to the counter, only stopping to pick up a few random outfits on the way. The shop assistant took one look at the coping with death book, then at him, added two and two together and got ninety-six. She stayed quiet, but the Doctor could see her welling up as she put the items into four bags and handed them to him after he’d flashed his psychic paper. He left the shop with a rather sad-looking woman in his wake, nine bags on his arms.

* * *

He got back to the TARDIS, left the bags in the kitchen and went to Eli’s room. The boy was still fast asleep, so the Doctor returned to the console room with the book about death in his hand. He flipped through it, absorbing everything in one go, and immediately felt a lot more comfortable about the topic. He threw the book onto the console, nearly hitting the lever that turned the ship upside-down.

For a while he sat on the chair, wondering what to do. He mentally consulted his to do list. Sleep? Check. Food? Check. Something to amuse Eli? Check. Attention? Couldn’t give attention to an unconscious human. So the list was, temporarily, completed. That meant he was free to do what he liked, at least until Eli woke up.

But he couldn’t go anywhere with Eli asleep. If he went out and got into his usual scrape and couldn’t get back to the TARDIS for some reason, he’d be leaving Eli alone, which he’d already discovered was a direct breaking of rule one.

Though, a couple of hours wouldn’t hurt, surely?

He got up, about to program the TARDIS, when something stopped him. He realised that, actually, for the first time in his life, he didn’t  _ want  _ to go anywhere.

Another five minutes of staring at the time rotor passed. This was ridiculous. He couldn’t just sit here until Eli woke up. It might be hours, yet.

Familiarisation, he thought suddenly. In order to utilise the benefits of the toys, he’d have to familiarise himself with them. If he could come up with some pre-planned games, that was probably the most productive use of his time.

As he got up to go to the bags, he did have to wonder just when his life had started revolving around the four-year-old.

* * *

After quite a while, the Doctor eventually managed to get all of the toys out of their plastic packets, and he was left with a mountain of trains, bears and dolls. He realised he’d even picked up a Toy Story spaceship at some point, so he set it down on the table and began to explore it, opening and closing all the various clicky doors and things that popped out. It was only when he accidentally knocked a button that the toy suddenly shrieked, ‘to infinity … and beyond!’ in terrible sound quality, nearly causing him to spill his tea in the surprise.

He pulled out his sonic screwdriver, buzzing the spaceship. He pressed the button again, and this time the phrase came out much clearer.

Inspired, the Doctor retrieved the rest of the toys and set to work improving their pre-programmed phrases. He then went back to Buzz’s spaceship, and quickly decided it could do with a little improvement.

Leaving Buzz’s spaceship in the kitchen, he ran to the room Donna had dubbed his “man drawer”, a room filled with spare parts of various things he’d acquired over the years. He grabbed a few select parts, returned to the kitchen and commenced improving the plastic ship.

By the time he was finished, Buzz Lightyear’s spaceship was fitted with a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer shell, retros, gravity stabilisers, movements sensors and a warp drive. He then grabbed the next toy, a car, and fitted that with nitrous and anti-grav. He was about to finish giving a bear the ability to travel through time when suddenly he heard crying, and Eli shouting for his mummy.

Alarmed, the Doctor dropped the bear, which immediately dematerialised into the vortex, and he ran to Eli’s room. There he found the child sitting up, crying.

‘Eli,’ the Doctor said quickly, rushing to him. ‘What’s wrong?’

Eli reached up for a hug. ‘Scary,’ the boy told him.

The Doctor held him in return, figuring it out. ‘Nightmares?’

Eli nodded, tears pouring down his face.

‘It’s okay,’ the Doctor eventually said after he’d decided what to do. ‘Nightmares aren’t real, they’re just scary images in your head. They can’t hurt you. Well, except for the …’

The Doctor abruptly stopped himself. Probably the wrong time to introduce the four-year-old to pieces of his own absurd life. 

‘What?’ Eli asked between tears.

The Doctor rushed for something else to say. ‘Except for … the ones that really  _ do  _ exist, but the problem is they’re so rubbish at being nightmares that whenever they try and scare you, they scare themselves, so they run away.’

Eli giggled, still clinging onto him. Crisis averted, the Doctor noted, applauding himself.

‘I want Mummy,’ the boy suddenly said. ‘When is Mummy coming back?’

The Doctor held him a little tighter. He’d read the book, now. He could handle this. ‘Mummy’s died. Her body was all done living, Eli.’

Eli wiped at his eyes. ‘What?’

‘Her body doesn’t work now. She doesn’t eat or sleep or feel any pain anymore.’

‘But … but Mummy’s gonna come back for my birthday?’

‘No, Eli. The spaceship you were on crashed, she was very badly hurt and she died.’

Eli stared at him. ‘My fault.’

‘No, no it’s not your fault,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘There was an accident and she was too hurt to get better. It was nothing to do with you.’

‘But I want her to come back and hug me,’ Eli said, confused.

‘She can’t, Eli,’ he said patiently. ‘No matter how much we want it, dead people can’t come back to life. She can’t come back to see you.’

Eli just looked confused. He still couldn’t quite grasp the concept. The Doctor thought for a moment, re-reading the bereavement book in his head. Time to get symbolic, he decided.

* * *

The shansheeth had taken Eli’s mother’s body, and they could really only return to the planet the ship had crashed. The carnage and the bodies were cleaned up, leaving the barren planet empty, still and silent.

The Doctor led the toddler to space in the clearing, and they both sat down crossed-legged.

‘What was your mummy’s favourite colour, Eli? D’you know?’ the Doctor asked.

‘Um … Red.’

‘Okay.’ The Doctor pulled a few balloons out of his pocket, picking the red one. Eli watched, bemused as the Time Lord blew it up and tied it. He then held it to the toddler.

‘We’re going to say good bye to Mummy,’ he said. ‘Is there anything you want to say to Mummy?’ 

‘Bye, bye, Mummy,’ Eli said, and kissed and hugged it. ‘I love you.’

‘Get a good grip,’ the Doctor said. Eli obligingly took hold. ‘Now, when you’re ready, let go.’

He did. The balloon rose in front of them, and slowly wafted away.

‘Bye, Mummy,’ the Doctor encouraged, waving at the balloon.

‘Bye, Mummy,’ Eli said, waving his little hand. For a while they watched the balloon disappear into the sky, until it became just a speck in the distance.

Rule two, the Doctor mused as he watched it disappear. To human children, balloons were fantastic metaphors for anything.


	3. Toys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor introduces Eli to his Doctor-enhanced toys, and attempts to feed him. Eli does something terrible to the TARDIS.

‘Now you gotta be careful with Buzz’s spaceship,’ the Doctor told the boy. ‘I’ve put on some extra stuff, so ...’

Eli ignored him and pressed the button.

_ ‘To infinity ... and beyond!’  _ the toy chimed in a clear-cut voice. Eli shrieked with delight.

The Doctor tried again. ‘Eli, there’s a few extra bits that …’

_ ‘To infinity … and beyond!’  _

‘Eli, I need to tell you …’

_ ‘To infinity … and beyond!’  _ Buzz Lightyear interrupted him for the third time.

‘Eli!’ the Doctor yelped, snatching the toy. 

Eli looked at the toy, then at him, and then burst into tears.

The Doctor’s eyes shot wide open with panic. ‘No, sorry!’ he said quickly, handing the toy back.

Eli took it, sniffing. ‘You’re a poo-poo head.’

‘Massively,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘I’m sorry. But there’s some new features. Can I show you?’

Eli gazed at him momentarily, before nodding and handing it back.

‘Buzz has now got some extra bits, so you can do this.’ He pressed the new button he’d made. The toy ship’s new retros fired up, the anti-gravs engaged and Buzz’s ship began to hover in the air. Eli giggled.

The Doctor looked at him, grinning at his delighted face. ‘Now, engage the warp drive …’

The Doctor let go of the ship. It began to fly around the room of its own accord, dodging the furniture with its new sensors, accompanied by the sound of lasers being shot. Then it reached a wall.

_ ‘To infinity … and beyond!’  _ Buzz cried, and the ship made a deep, droning sound, before surging forward towards the wall and disappearing.

Eli stared, mesmerised. ‘But … where did it went?’ he asked, confused.

The Doctor beamed. ‘Clever part,’ he said, taking the toddler’s hand and leading him out of the room, around the the next room. There they found Buzz’s ship still flying around, the laser sound effects still going.

Eli laughed and clapped happily. He ran to the ship, but seconds later it approached the wall.

_ ‘To infinity … and beyond!’  _ Buzz said, and it warped back through the wall.

Eli laughed again and ran back into the kitchen, his hands aloft to try and catch it.

* * *

Deciding Eli was safely amused for a while, the Doctor went to the console room to look for children’s homes near to Hax. It made much more sense to find Eli a place to live nearer to his home planet than in a completely different part of the universe.

He found three children’s homes within distance, and mentally logged the name of each. By the time he got back to the kitchen Eli was hungry.

As Buzz continued to fly around the room, the Doctor gave Eli a random toy to play with as he rooted through the Tesco bags, pulling out the metric ton of tiny jars and setting them on the side to inspect them.

He opened one called “chicken dinner”, and stared inside it, confused. Within the jar he’d been expecting to find some actual food, somehow compacted inside, but instead what he found was a load of yellow mush.

He experimentally dipped a finger in and tested it. Tasted like chicken, obviously. He checked the jar again, realising that, although it did say 3+, in full it said “3+ months”.

Still, food was food, he reasoned. Regarding human children, this mushy stuff had to be the intermediary food between milk and steak. Some sort of strange period when the baby had had all of the milk available from their mother, but didn’t have teeth yet.

He scooped the contents of the tiny jar into a bowl. The portion was absolutely miniscule.

‘Neeeoww!’ Eli was saying, pushing the train around on the floor on all-fours. The Doctor looked at him, trying to mentally place the portion in the boy’s stomach. Surely he’d need more than that?

The Doctor scanned over the jars again, and picked up one labelled “spaghetti bolognese”. Did chicken and spaghetti bolognese go together? He’d never seen them together before.

He taste-tested the bolognese, then the chicken. Then he tried them both at the same time. Seemed okay, he reasoned after a moment, and heaped the mush into the chicken dinner, mixing it up. He then put it on the table with a spoon.

Eli abandoned his train and ran up to climb on the chair, taking his spoon in his fist. He stared at the Doctor, who took a seat opposite. 

‘What?’ the Doctor asked, realising Eli was waiting for something.

‘Is it okay to eat, please?’ Eli asked.

‘Oh. Yeah,’ the Doctor assured him. Eli took a scoop, and ate it. After a few moments of chewing, he pulled a disgusted face.

‘Tastes yucky,’ the little boy said.

The Doctor frowned, pulling the bowl to himself. He dipped a finger and tested it. ‘Seems all right,’ he said, pushing the bowl back.

‘Don’t want it,’ the boy said. 

‘Oh, come on. It’s acceptable.’

‘No!’ Eli repeated firmly, and pushed the bowl back towards the Doctor. 

The Doctor caught the bowl. ‘Okay, okay,’ he conceded. ‘Let’s try again.’

He got up and returned to the jars as Eli sat in the chair, squirming and holding his feet. The Doctor picked a few, and took them back to the table.

‘How about we taste test everything?’ the Doctor asked, opening the jars in turn. He stuck his finger into the carrot and sweet potato mash, encouraging Eli to do the same. ‘Okay, three, two, one … Taste!’

They both stuck their fingers in their mouths.

‘Eww, don’t like it,’ Eli said.

‘Me either,’ the Doctor moaned. ‘Okay, bin!’ he said, and shoved it to the side. ‘Next one … cauliflower cheese.’

‘Don’t like it,’ Eli said.

‘You haven’t even tasted it yet!’ the Doctor pointed out. ‘Come on, together. Three, two, one …’

‘Don’t like it!’ Eli said again after two seconds.

‘I do,’ the Doctor mused, and pulled the jar towards him. ‘Mine, then. Next one. Three, two, one …’

‘Yummy!’ Eli enthused, grinning.

‘Dinner,’ the Doctor said, pushing it to Eli and giving him back his spoon. 

Eli eagerly ate it. ‘What is it?’ the boy asked halfway through a mouthful.

‘Err … apple and raspberry. Wait. Can you read?’ the Doctor asked, eating his cauliflower cheese goo.

Eli shrugged, eating another spoonful. A lot of it was dropping onto the table and caking itself around his mouth.

Reading, the Doctor mentally added to his to do list, before he quickly stopped himself. He would be finding Eli a home long before any of that.

* * *

After eating, the Doctor introduced Eli to a couple more of his enhanced toys. Quite soon, a few more planes were flying around, and cars with nitrous were scooting along the floor of the TARDIS. The time-travelling bear had also appeared in the console room only slightly singed from his journey through the vortex, so the Doctor had introduced Eli to that as well after he’d refined the enhancements. 

‘He’s a dematerialisation bear,’ the Doctor told Eli. ‘If you drop him, he’ll warp into the vortex, and travel through time and space and reappear somewhere else in the Tardis. Then you’ve gotta find him again. It’s hide and seek, I guess.’

He gave the bear to Eli. Eli beamed happily.

‘Okay, now drop him,’ the Doctor said. Eli did, and immediately the bear warped out of time and spaced. 

Eli looked beyond surprised. ‘Where Demmy Bear go?’ he asked, looking up at the Doctor.

‘That’s the fun part!’ the Doctor enthused. ‘We’ve gotta look around the TARDIS to find him. He could be anywhere from here to the library.’

‘Go go!’ Eli enthused, grabbing the Doctor’s hand and pulling him back into the depths of the TARDIS.

* * *

Finding the newly-dubbed Demmy Bear had been no mean feat, but Eli had kept focused. He had made a mess of a lot of the TARDIS in the process, but strangely, the Doctor was finding he didn’t really care anymore. Eli was having fun. That was the important thing.

After an hour of endless hunting through the botanical gardens, the library, the bedrooms, the kitchen and beyond, they finally found Demmy Bear in the wardrobe, sitting by the mirror. Then the search began all over again.

Finally after the fifth search for Denny Bear was complete, the mystery of the nappy was solved when Eli asked for the potty. The Doctor didn’t have one among his purchases, so he sat Eli on a toilet until the little boy was done, unsure of whether he should supervise or not. Eventually he conceded to leave the room, hoping Eli wouldn’t fall into the toilet. A little while later the boy emerged, smiling.

‘Doc-tah, I did!’ he said, beaming.

‘Did what?’ the Doctor asked, bewildered.

‘I did a poo in the big toilet,’ the boy told him happily.

Before he knew it Eli had grabbed his leg and began pulling him in the bathroom, showing him the toilet, where he had indeed, pooped.

‘Err …’ the Doctor began, looking between the toilet and little boy, who was looking so incredibly proud of himself. ‘Well done!’ he finally said, gathering him up into a tight hug. ‘You did a poo in the big toilet!’

They returned to hunting for Demmy Bear again. The hours seemed to fly by, and after another meal out of a jar the Doctor told a bedtime story about the Famous Five, and Eli went to sleep.

As the Doctor returned to taste-test more of the jars, he dared to think that maybe, just maybe, he was starting to get the hang of this.

* * *

The next morning the Doctor was woken up by Buzz Lightyear, finding himself lying on the console room floor surrounded by empty jars of baby food, feeling ever so slightly sick. He groaned, sat up, and saw Eli sitting cross-legged on the floor playing with a car.

‘Eli?’ he asked, dazed.

The boy didn’t respond. The Doctor took one of the jars instead, and abruptly realised that during the previous night he’d gorged his way through all of the banana-flavoured jars of baby food, which totalled forty-eight. He checked the ingredients and noticed with a slight pang of horror, that every single jar contained an ingredient which was an extremely mild sedative to Time Lords, but when forty-eight doses had been eaten at once it had cleaned knocked him out.

‘Eli?’ the Doctor asked, focusing a little more on the boy sitting next to him. The boy still looked extremely guilty. ‘Wait. What did you do?’

‘Nuffin’,’ the boy said.

‘Eli,’ the Doctor repeated, lowering his voice. ‘C’mon. Look me in the eye.’

Eli reluctantly looked at him. He had baby food all over him.

‘What did you do?’

‘Nuffin’,’ the boy repeated, his eyes flickering to his right. The Doctor followed, and realised parts of the console were splattered with baby food, clearly painted on by little human hands.

The Doctor, for a moment, just stared in complete disbelief. Mess in the corridors, he was okay with. The rooms, fine. But the console of his beloved ship, covered in brightly-coloured baby food?

It took a few seconds until something inside the Doctor’s brain audibly snapped.

‘ELI!!!’ he screamed. ‘C’MERE YOU LITTLE …’

* * *

‘Okay,’ the Doctor said to the boy an hour later after he’d managed to calm down somewhat, sitting in the living room nursing a cup of tea. ‘Clearly we’ve got some issues we need to work on. I mean, I’m really happy for you to be here, but there are just some things that you don’t do, and one of them is doing  _ anything  _ to my Tardis.’

Eli stared up at him from the other chair.

‘No, no,’ the Doctor said, raising a hand as if to interrupt him. ‘I know what you’re going to say; I didn’t set out the ground rules. And you’re right, I didn’t. So here goes. Never,  _ ever  _ put anything squidgy or runny on my Tardis console. In fact, just don’t even go  _ near  _ it. You’re banned from the console room.’

Eli continued to stare at him.

‘I know, you’re right,’ the Doctor acknowledged, hands in the air. ‘It’s harsh, but that’s what it’s come to. I still like you, Eli, but you’ve burnt some bridges today. That’s just how it’s got to be.’

Eli said nothing.

'Okay, I'm sorry! I lost my temper a little bit and that was stupid of me, I know. But you don't have to be so judgemental. It's just my Tardis is all I've got, so when people put baby food all over her control systems I get a little annoyed.’

Still silent, Eli just blinked.

'I  _ know  _ it was only a little bit, but it was still a fair amount and I've going to have to deep clean her to get it all out. Which takes ages. I only did it two months ago so you can understand why I'm annoyed.’

Eli began to suck on his thumb.

'Don't give me that look,’ the Doctor chastised. 'I  _ know  _ that technically I should deep clean her every month but I don't and yes, that's lazy of me. But it just takes so long and it's so boring that I can't face it every month. Even though that's what's going to keep her going for that extra couple of hundred years.’

Eli looked at his pile of toys on the floor.

'Oh, you can't even look at me you're so ashamed. And you're right. It is shaming. I should deep clean her, right now.’

The Doctor finished his tea and got up. 'Thanks for being so understanding, Eli,’ he said, and walked out of the door.

As the sound of Buzz Lightyear started up again as he left the room and closed the door, he mentally reviewed the conversation he'd just had, and groaned.

'I’ve  _ got  _ to find him somewhere to live,’ he moaned, and went to retrieve some bleach.

Rule three. When a human child smears baby food over your time machine, you should probably tell him off, rather than thanking him.


	4. Homes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor attempts to find Eli a home.

After the Doctor had managed to clean up both the console and Eli, he decided that as he clearly wasn’t cut out for this, it was time to find the boy a home. The buttons on the console were still a little squidgy from the baby food, but that couldn’t really be helped, so the Doctor piloted as best he could for the first children’s home on the list – the Jersa Major Children’s Home. It was a safe pick, he’d decided, as it was the closest home to Hax that was out of the war zone, so it wouldn’t be too jarring for Eli concerning the place in time and space.

‘Today we're going to find you somewhere to live, okay?’ the Doctor told the boy before they went out.

‘I wanna stay here ...?’ Eli replied, confused.

The Doctor smiled sadly. ‘Not possible, Eli. You're better off surrounded by people who can look after you properly. And, well, that's clearly not me. But I'm going to find some lovely people who will love you and care for you.’

‘But I wanna stay. ‘Til Mummy comes back from the ground.’

The Doctor brushed the boy's hair from his big blue eyes, kneeling down to him. ‘She's not coming back, Eli. We waved goodbye to the balloon, didn't we?’

‘Oh,’ Eli said, thinking about that. ‘But … she gotta come back, Doc-tah. I'm gonna miss Mummy if she don't come back.’

The pause was brief, but then the penny seemed to drop as Eli finally burst into tears. The Doctor leaned forward, and hugged the little boy.

'I w-want ... my M-mummy,’ Eli gasped between tears. 'I don't … don't want her g-gone, Doc-tah.’

'I know,’ the Doctor said softly, the little boy's crying immediately making him want to cry. ‘I'm sorry. But everything's going to be fine. I’ll find you a really nice home.’

'C-can stay here?’ Eli asked, pulling back to look at the Time Lord, wiping his cheeks.

'I'm sorry, Eli. No,’ the Doctor said.

‘Is … is it cos I d-did the … the bad thing?’ Eli asked.

‘No,’ the Doctor said quickly. ‘It’s not that, that was my fault. I just can’t look after you.’ Eli's lip wobbled in the sure sign of more oncoming tears, so the Doctor quickly spoke again, ‘you don't want to stay here. You’ll be lonely and bored. I'm taking you somewhere where you can get lots of playmates, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Eli murmured, but didn’t sound that happy about it.

* * *

Leading the four-year-old by the hand, the Doctor took Eli out of the TARDIS and into a well-tended garden. They walked down a perfectly pristine path that had not a single blemish, towards a modern-looking complex. They went through the entrance into an impeccably-clean and quiet reception area, with a single Jersan female sitting at the desk, hooked into an interface.

‘Good morning,’ she greeted as they approached.

‘Morning,’ the Doctor responded with a smile. ‘I found Eli in a crashed spaceship – he’s got no relatives – can you take him?’

‘What species is he?’

‘He’s mostly human.’

She typed a little into her computer interface. ‘We have space,’ she said eventually, and reached under the desk, pulling out a handheld datapad to the Doctor. ‘If you could just fill in the details, please.’

The Doctor took it, letting go of Eli’s hand. They boy immediately dropped to the floor to play with the train he was holding.

**Thank you for choosing the Jersa Major Children’s Home to unload your unwanted offspring today.**

**Please fill in all the details below.**

**Number of unwanted offspring:**

**Species of unwanted offspring:**

**Age(s) of unwanted offspring:**

**Allergies of unwanted offspring:**

**Temperament(s) of unwanted offspring:**

**The unwanted offspring shall be given new names and memory alterations to forget their previous life with you. They will be given a shared room, with one caregiver for every ten offspring. Once matured, the unwanted offspring are given 100 credits, a blanket and medical pack, and evicted from the home.**

**Here at the Jersa Major Children’s Home, we care about your satisfaction. We aim to make sure that your unwanted offspring shall never disturb you. Upon granting the Jersa Major Children’s Home ownership of your unwanted offspring, you are forfeiting all of your rights to it.**

**If you agree to this, please sign on the dotted line  ……….**

The Doctor look up at the woman, slightly horrified by what he’d read. She was utterly stoic and emotionless, staring at him. And now he was listening, he realised that he couldn’t hear children anywhere, apart from Eli, who was still playing with his train.

‘Um, sorry,’ the Doctor began. ‘But … where are all the children in here?’

The woman gazed at him. Her expression still hadn’t changed. ‘The unwanted offspring are currently confined to their rooms.’

‘Confined?’

‘Unwanted offspring are confined for twelve hours per day.’

‘Isn’t that a little … cruel?’

‘Our methods are approved by the Shadow Proclamation,’ she replied, utterly deadpan. ‘One hundred percent of unwanted offspring leave our care with a rating of good to excellent mental and physical health.’

‘Can you, erm, stop calling them unwanted offspring?’ the Doctor asked seriously.

‘Company policy,’ she replied.

The Doctor felt his eye twitching slightly. ‘Okay,’ he said brightly, putting the datapad back on the desk. ‘You know what? I think I’m fine.’

‘Goodbye,’ the woman said without another word, and immediately blanked him and Eli.

The Doctor turned back to Eli, stretching out his hand for the little boy to take again. ‘Sorry, it’s no go here, Eli.’

‘No home here?’ Eli asked.

‘No, not here. But we’ve got plenty more options. Don’t worry.’

* * *

He tried the next home, on Pokai 6, just a little further away from Hax. It was a lot more like a children’s home, with all manner of species running around the garden outside, playing, laughing and smiling, but there did seem to be quite a lot of them.

He lead Eli in through the entrance, and found a member of staff, a gerinax lady, in the midst of running around, looking slightly frazzled. Though she was clearly busy, she stopped and smiled at them, kneeling down to Eli.

‘Hello, my lovely,’ she said kindly to the boy.

‘Hello,’ Eli replied politely.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ the Doctor said seriously.

‘No trouble,’ the woman assured him. ‘What’s the little one’s name?’

‘This is Eli. I’m the Doctor.’

‘I’m Kazz,’ she said, smiling. ‘I run the home. What can I do for you?’

‘Eli’s been orphaned by the war, I’m looking for somewhere for him to live,’ the Doctor explained.

She looked genuinely pained. ‘I’m so sorry, but we’re at absolute maximum capacity. There’s no way I can take another child. We’ve completely run out of space ‘

‘War makes a lot of orphans,’ the Doctor mused, looking around. There were a _lot_ of children.

She nodded. ‘Since the day it began, I’ve had about ten children a day looking for somewhere safe. I’m so sorry I can’t take Eli. Have you tried looking for relatives?’

‘I found him on a crashed refugee ship from Hax,’ the Doctor said. ‘He was the only survivor. I’ve checked – he’s got no family left. Not a single person.’

‘Oh, no,’ Kazz moaned, looking to the little boy again. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll find  somewhere, I’m sure.’ She looked back at the Doctor. ‘Why don’t you look after him? I know your name, Doctor, I know what you do. He would be fine with you.’

The Doctor pulled a face. ‘I can’t. He’s too young.’

‘Well, I hope you find somewhere for him,’ she said, and smiled at Eli again. ‘You take good care, Eli.’

* * *

The Doctor had started out this search feeling quite optimistic, but as children’s home by children’s home trickled away, he wasn’t feeling very positive as he reached the last name on his list. The Outer Hax Orphanage, located on the planet closest to the war. He wasn’t sure he felt safe leaving Eli on a planet that could be caught in the crossfire at any second, but he was fast running out of options.

Still, there was no way of knowing how safe it was until he went there. So for the third time, he programmed the TARDIS.

* * *

The outside was nice and peaceful enough - a large house with a garden area outside, which children were playing in. But it became clear as the Doctor entered the gate, that something about him and Eli was catching everyone’s attention, as the children stopped playing and started staring at them, whispering and pointing.

Undeterred, the Doctor continued into the building. There stood another gerinax lady playing with a small child, but the moment they entered she looked up, and disgust crept onto her face.

‘Morning!’ the Doctor said brightly.

‘What do you want?’ she asked rudely.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Sorry, but this is a children’s home, isn’t it? I have an orphan who needs a home.’

Her eyes flashed to Eli, still holding the Doctor’s hand. Her hostile disposition was causing Eli to stand a little closer to the Time Lord. ‘We don’t take your kind, here.’

‘And what is my kind?’ the Doctor wondered.

‘Humans,’ she spat.

‘And what’s wrong with humans?’ the Doctor asked.

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we are at war with you,’ she grated. They were beginning to accumulate an audience of children, now. ‘Your kind killed all of these children’s parents.’

‘There are innocent victims on both sides of the war, you know,’ the Doctor said, trying not to get annoyed. ‘You can’t possibly direct your hatred for the actions of some soldiers who are obeying orders onto an orphaned child, can you?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Leave the premises immediately.’

‘Every child caught up in this war is innocent, no matter what side they’re on,’ he continued, ignoring her. ‘Every child needs to be loved and cared for.’

‘This conversation is over.’

The Doctor didn’t care, lowering his voice, ‘I found Eli in a crashed spaceship filled with refugees of all species, which could have only been shot down. His dead mother was holding onto him so tightly that I could barely get him out. He’s got absolutely nobody left in the entire universe, and you’d turn him away because you don’t like some of his species?’

‘Leave, human!’

‘Time Lord,’ the Doctor corrected. ‘I have absolutely nothing to do with this war, but I still want what’s best for the children.’

‘Then you should know more than anyone, Time Lord,’ she spat. ‘Would you give a home, your love and what little food you have to a baby Dalek? Don’t expect us to care for the children of our enemies.’

‘You want peace, don’t you?’ the Doctor asked. ‘You will never achieve peace when you continue to hate everyone just because of where they came from. You can only fight hate with love.’

‘Says the species that killed billions of people across the universe in your putrid Time War,’ she shot back. ‘How many people did _you_ kill, Time Lord? How many orphans did you make? Did you care about any of them?’

The Doctor glared at her.

‘Don’t have an answer, do you?’ she replied. ‘You think by doing a few good deeds that you can erase all the death you caused?’

‘No, I don’t,’ the Doctor replied softly, before steeling his voice, ‘this isn’t about me or my species, I’m just trying to find an orphaned boy a home.’

‘Well, it’s not here,’ she snapped. ‘Get out.’

* * *

The Doctor lead Eli back to the TARDIS, feeling a little hollow inside. He programmed for the vortex then dropped into the chair next to Eli, his head in his hands.

‘No home?’ Eli asked.

‘No,’ the Doctor muttered, lowering his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Eli. I’ll think of something else.’

There was a long pause.

'No one want me,’ Eli suddenly muttered to his shoes.

'That’s not true, don't say that. We’ll find somewhere.’

'But you don't want me,’ Eli whispered.

The Doctor didn't have an answer for that.

* * *

Deciding to go to bed was probably the worst idea he’d had all day (not that he’d had many good ones since taking Eli on board), but when Eli was fed and asleep, the Doctor found himself wandering around the TARDIS without any direction, trying not to think about the Time War.

He didn’t want to work on the TARDIS, read, or do anything he’d normally do to pass time whilst his companions were sleeping. He’d tried to decide what he was going to with Eli, but he couldn’t concentrate. So in the end he’d just conceded to go to bed to pass some time.

Forty minutes later he woke up, sweating profusely and shaking wildly from a particularly bad dream. The gerinax in the children’s home had done a stellar job of resurfacing some memories – memories which he’d previously hoped were going away for a while.

Not for the first time since the war, he found himself sitting up in bed, running the images through his head, crying alone in the dark.

‘Doc-tah?’ a little voice asked quietly.

‘Eli,’ the Doctor realised, hastily wiping at his face. ‘You should be asleep.’

Eli ignored that, just staring at him. ‘Why you crying?’

‘It’s nothing, don’t worry.’

Eli moved forward, climbing onto the bed. He shuffled to the Time Lord, hugging him. ‘Are you crying cos of me?’

‘No. I just … had a bad dream, Eli.’

‘Nightmare?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Me too. But nightmares can’t get you cos they scare themselves when they scare you cos they’re rubbish,’ Eli informed him.

The Doctor smiled sadly. ‘Yeah.’

Eli then let go of him and dived under the covers. The Doctor joined him.

‘Monster can’t get us here,’ Eli whispered, curling into a ball. ‘Safe, now.’

‘Yeah,’ the Doctor said again, pushing the duvet away from Eli’s face.

‘I love you.’

The Doctor's hearts stilled; shocked. He’d been alone for so long. It had been a very long time since he'd heard those words with such sincerity. The last time, he'd been staring at Rose on Bad Wolf Bay.

For a moment, he found himself lost for words. But Eli didn’t seem to want a reply. The boy just repositioned his head, and closed his eyes.

The Doctor pulled down the cover a little so Eli would be able to breathe, and gazed at the little human momentarily. Then, he closed his eyes too.

Rule four. When a human child says they love you, even a 900-year-old alien trying to get rid of them may have second thoughts.


	5. Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor visits Martha and Sarah to see if they'll take the boy.

Much to the Doctor's surprise, he slept for eight hours straight in a dreamless sleep, and was only woken up by Eli calling him. The Time Lord found himself still half-buried under the cover, and had to navigate his way out, bleary-eyed, to see the little boy standing by the bed holding a tray.

‘I made you breakfast, Daddy,’ Eli said, beaming happily.

The Doctor looked at it, still half-asleep. It was a pile of mixed up food which he couldn’t identify, saturated with something that looked like milk, or quite possibly Coca-Cola.

‘Oh, thanks,’ the Doctor said, taking the tray. Eli beamed, and ran out of the door, just as the Doctor processed what the boy had just said.

Daddy!?

‘Eli!’ the Doctor called, hurriedly putting the tray down and running after the boy. Eli didn’t notice, disappearing into the living room where all his toys were. The Doctor followed him in, where the boy dropped to his knees to play with one of his cars.

‘Eli, you can’t call me Daddy,’ the Doctor told him, trying to sound firm.

Eli looked up at him. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’m not your Daddy, I’m just looking after you until I can get you a new home.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because I want to find you somewhere nice to live.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you can’t stay here.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I can’t look after you.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘Well, because I don’t think I can keep you safe.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘Because my life’s dangerous and I’m better off on my own.’

‘Why?’

‘People who come with me get hurt.’

‘Why they get hurt?’

‘Because bad things happen to them.’

‘Why?’

‘Can you stop asking why?’ the Doctor asked seriously.

‘Why?’ Eli asked, grinning.

‘Why?’ the Doctor countered, dropping to sit down next to him.

‘Why?’ Eli persisted, giggling.

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Okay, okay,’ the Doctor said, hands in the air. ‘We can’t do this all day.’

‘Why can’t we?’

‘Because it’s …’ The Doctor stopped himself as he realised he’d just been sucked straight back into it. ‘No. Not doing it.’

‘Why you not doing it?’

‘Eli!’ the Doctor cried. ‘Okay. C’mon. Let’s find you some breakfast.’

Eli opened his mouth.

‘Because you’re hungry, because you need food, because it gives you energy, because else you’ll die, because that’s evolution, because that’s the way the universe works, because it just is,’ the Doctor reeled off.

Eli gazed at him with a devious smile, chewing on the ear of Demmy Bear. ‘… Why?’

The Doctor sighed, but couldn’t hide his smile.

* * *

As Eli ate, the Doctor took the calculated risk of leaving him alone to go to the console room. He promptly scanned for anymore children’s homes near Hax, but the closest ones were almost a lightyear away, and they were on planets he didn’t know much about. Too much of a change for Eli, he decided, and he didn’t know how safe they were for a four-year-old human boy.

He dropped into his chair, and thought hard. There was really only one place he was sure Eli would be safe, although he’d been avoiding it for a while now. Planet Earth, with Martha, Sarah or Jack. They were all humans, the Doctor reasoned. They would know how to look after a four-year-old, wouldn’t they? Some sort of instinctive thing? Besides, surely Jack had raised a few illegitimate children in his time?

The Doctor did a quick risk assessment in his head. Eli didn’t speak English, but he hoped his young mind would pick it up quickly. Also, his body was slightly different to 21st century humans, but he was the same on the outside and Martha, Jack and Sarah would be okay with any differences, as long as they were informed. It was a little out of Eli’s home in terms of time, but at least the Doctor knew he’d be safe.

Yeah, he decided. Earth. 

* * *

After Eli had finished his breakfast and been cleaned up and dressed, the Doctor took him to the console room.

‘I’ve decided I’m going to take you to Earth,’ he told the child. ‘Have you ever heard of Earth?’

Eli nodded, smiling. ‘Yeah. S’where all humans used to live.’

‘Exactly. I’ve got a few friends there that we’re going to go and see, okay? You’ll like them.’

Eli nodded, and immediately starting running around the console making engine noises, holding a toy spaceship. The Doctor watched him for a moment, before picking up the phone Martha had given him and calling her.

_ ‘Hello?’ _

‘Martha, it’s me,’ the Doctor said. 

_ ‘Doctor?’  _ she asked, surprised.  _ ‘You’re calling me?’ _

‘Yeah, look, I need to meet you.’

_ ‘Why?’ _

‘I’ve got a bit of a thing going on here.’

_ ‘What? Are you okay? Wait, what’s that noise?’ _

‘Yeah, fine, it’s just …’ The Doctor paused, looking at Eli who was still playing and making loud engine noises. ‘Well, I’ll explain when I get there. What’s the date and place?’

_ ‘It’s the 8th August, and I’m in the London Unit headquarters. It’s three thirty.’ _

‘Okay, I’ll see you in a minute.’

* * *

The TARDIS landed outside UNIT at precisely 3:32pm, and the Doctor stepped out into the sunshine holding Eli’s hand. The boy was staying close to him as usual.

‘This is Earth,’ the Doctor told Eli. ‘21st century – about five thousand years before you were born. Bit of an awkward century with some strange, barely explainable things in the first half, but mostly pleasant, promise. Look.’ He stooped down to Eli’s height and pointed beyond the UNIT compound to the metropolis in the distance. ‘That’s London; capital of England. Full of people in suits, and cyclists. That’s two different things, by the way, suits and cyclists. Although, sometimes the cyclists wear suits.’

‘Is it home?’ Eli asked.

‘Hopefully. We’re just going to see my friend, Martha.’

Just as he finished speaking, she appeared through the security gates. The Doctor waved at her and stood up. As she approached, her smile froze, and her eyes connected to Eli, clearly confused.

‘This is Eli,’ the Doctor said by way of introduction before Martha could speak. ‘Eli, this is Martha.’

‘Hello,’ Eli said.

‘Oh, hello,’ Martha said, smiling at the boy. She then looked at the Doctor, bewildered. ‘Is he …?’

‘No, he’s not mine,’ the Doctor interrupted, smiling politely. 

‘Sorry, it’s just he looks quite a lot like you,’ she said.

The Doctor ignored that. ‘I need to ask a favour.’

* * *

‘You want me to  _ adopt  _ him?’ Martha asked ten minutes later in the café, utterly bewildered as she stared at the boy, currently being entertained by some UNIT soldiers across the room.

‘Why not?’ the Doctor asked. ‘Look, he’s got no one – no family or anything. He just needs somewhere safe.’

‘Doctor, do you realise how much responsibility having a child is?’ she asked. ‘I travel for Unit, I’ve got my work, I’m busy. There’s no way I can look after a child.’

‘I’ve been doing it, you get used to it,’ the Doctor said quickly. ‘I feed him, give him toys, tell him some stories, and he’s pretty happy.’

‘What about when I go to New York? Peru?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Get him a nanny or something.’

‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you? Doctor, there’s absolutely no chance I can keep a four-year-old.’

‘But you’re both human. You’ll get on well.’

‘It doesn’t work like that!’ Martha insisted. ‘Where is he even from?’

‘In a wrecked spaceship, he was a refugee from the Hax war. His mother died in the crash and I’ve checked – he’s got no one, Martha.’

Martha’s expression fell. ‘Is he okay? Have you checked him over? If he was in a crashed ship, then …’

‘He’s fine, and you don’t need to scan him,’ the Doctor interrupted. ‘He just needs a home.’

‘I’m sorry, but there’s just no way I can take him.’

The Doctor sighed, and Martha’s steeled expression fell.

‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘Look, I could talk to Colonel Mace about some sort of adoption by Unit members, if you like? They’ll understand his background.’

The Doctor quickly shook his head. ‘I need to know he’s safe. I’ve tried the Hax children’s homes but the first was a borstal, the second was too crowded and the third hated him because he was human.’

‘What about places outside of Hax?’

‘It’d be too jarring for him,’ the Doctor explained. ‘At least on Earth he’s surrounded by his own race who know what he needs. Any other place he wouldn’t be. And I think he’d be much happier here; with someone I know.’

Martha smirked a little. ‘Sounds like you’re trying to talk yourself out of raising him.’

‘For about the thousandth time, no, I can’t,’ the Doctor replied, annoyed. 

‘Okay, okay,’ Martha said, hands in the air. ‘Just a thought.’

‘Doctor Jones,’ a UNIT soldier suddenly said from the doorway, snapping a salute. ‘Colonel Mace requests your presence in the surveillance room.’

‘I’ll be right there,’ Martha replied, before looking back at the Doctor. ‘Let me know if you want to find some adoptive parents.’

She left, and as the soldiers followed Eli came wandering back to the Doctor.

‘Staying with Unit?’ Eli asked.

‘No,’ the Doctor said, picking him up to sit in his lap. ‘Martha’s a bit busy.’

‘Oh,’ Eli muttered. ‘Means I can stay with you, Daddy?’

‘Not Daddy, remember?’ the Doctor prompted.

‘Oh, sorry.’

‘It’s okay. And there are other places. Let’s get going.’

* * *

The Doctor tried Ealing next, landing on the end of Bannerman Road.

‘This is Ealing. We’re properly inside London, now,’ the Doctor told Eli as they stepped out.

‘Ealing?’ Eli asked. ‘What’s it like?’

‘What’s it like? Well … hmm. Originally know as Gillingas to the Saxons. Used to be part of Middlesex. It’s been occupied for over 7000 years and now has about 70,000 people living in it. It’s got one of the most historically famous film studios in the UK, but doesn’t actually have any cinemas, weirdly enough. Is that irony? I could never figure out what that word meant. Anyway, we’re going to see Sarah.’

‘Sarah?’

‘Yeah, Sarah Jane Smith. Used to travel with me. C’mon.’

He lead Eli up the street to number thirteen, and rang the doorbell. Twenty seconds later the door opened and Sarah appeared, looking startled.

‘Doctor!’ she realised. ‘What are you …?’

She trailed off as her gaze inevitably drifted to the little boy standing next to him.

‘This is Eli,’ the Doctor said. ‘No, he’s not mine.’

‘Oh, sorry. He does look quite like you,’ Sarah said. 

The Doctor scratched behind his ear awkwardly. ‘Yeah, so I’ve been told. Listen, I’ve got a favour to ask.’

Sarah winced a little. ‘Could you hang on? There’s a hoix loose in the park.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ the Doctor said, stepping aside.

‘Oh, please, come with me,’ Sarah invited, grabbing her bag and shutting the door behind her. ‘Luke, Clyde and Rani are out, I could use some help.’

* * *

‘So he’s got no one?’ Sarah asked as they sat on a bench in the park, waiting for the hoix to make an appearance. Eli had run off to the children’s area a while ago to play with the other kids, and looked very happy on the slides playing with his new friends. Occasionally he kept glancing back to the Doctor, as if trying to find approval from his unofficial foster parent. The Doctor just waved at him periodically, encouraging him to play, though he was slightly paranoid that with Eli’s think-later attitude that he was going to end up running into something metal. Probably the swing set.

‘No one,’ the Doctor confirmed. ‘I’ve tried all the Hax children’s homes but they’re a no go, and Martha’s too busy with her work.’

Sarah looked at him. ‘You know I can’t take him, right?’

The Doctor sighed. ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘He’s just too young. When I adopted Luke he was already a teenager. I don’t know anything about four-year-olds, and I’m only getting older, Doctor,’ she said, smiling sadly. ‘He’s going to be a ball of energy for a while yet. If you can’t keep up with him, how am I going to?’

‘I know,’ the Doctor repeated, still watching the boy.

‘Is there nowhere else you can try?’

‘Just Jack,’ the Doctor said, running a hand through his hair.

‘Do you really think Jack would take him?’ Sarah asked seriously, but they both knew the answer.

The Doctor avoided the question. ‘I don’t have anywhere else to ask.’

‘Why not just a children’s home on Earth?’

‘He’s different internally, I need to find someone who can understand he’s not from here, but raise him normally. He doesn’t speak English and he’s only just understanding his mother’s died. All he’s known is war, and he has nightmares. He needs a lot of love and care.’

Sarah considered him, and opened her mouth to say something, just as there was yell from the park. The Doctor was up in a shot and across to Eli, who, as predicted, had run into the metal swing set.

‘Eli!’ the Doctor reached him, scooping him up. 

‘Owww!’ the little boy moaned and started crying.

‘Hey, hey,’ the Doctor said softly, checking his head. It was a little red, but it was nothing serious. ‘Gotta be careful and watch where you’re running. You okay?’

Eli sniffed. ‘Yeah,’ he said. The Doctor stood him up and gave him a quick hug.

‘Go on,’ he encouraged, pointing back to the playground. Eli giggled, and ran off. The Doctor made his way back to Sarah.

‘Don’t say it,’ the Doctor warned, sitting down next to her again, once more finding himself watching Eli like a hawk.

‘What was I going to say?’ Sarah wondered, smiling.

‘I can’t, you know I can’t.’

‘Can’t you?’

‘You know my life, Sarah,’ he replied. ‘Just put a child in the middle of that and tell me what happens to him. I can’t do what I do and constantly watch him.’

‘Perhaps. But you look after naïve humans all the time. You keep an eye on them.’

‘That’s different, they’re adults,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘They don’t enthuse to me every time they’ve had a poo. Well, most of them.’

Sarah laughed. ‘He did that?’

‘Yep,’ the Doctor replied, popping the ‘p’. 

‘Well, I know you won’t thank me for this, but I’ve come to know you quite well, and I personally think that you’ll be the best role model a child could have.’

The Doctor looked at her. ‘Really?’

‘Really,’ she confirmed. ‘If anyone can look after him, it’s you.’ Her watch suddenly started beeping and she checked it. ‘Hoix in range,’ she said, and reached into her bag to pull out a packet of bacon.

‘What’s the plan?’ the Doctor wondered, checking the scanner himself.

‘You haven’t got one?’ Sarah asked.

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Your hoix, your park, your plan.’

Sarah smiled. ‘I’m thinking the same formation we did with the begaxtrons.’

‘Geez, you’re taking me back,’ the Doctor commented, straining his memory.

‘You first, me second,’ she said.

‘Got it,’ the Doctor said, and took a slice of bacon. He quickly checked Eli’s position, and ran into the wooded area of the park where he almost immediately found the hoix, prowling in the trees. 

‘Good boy!’ the Doctor enthused, waving the piece of bacon in front of the hoix’s face. ‘Mmm, look at the food! Yummy! Attaboy!’ 

The hoix looked at him and his piece of bacon, intrigued. The Doctor moved, luring the hoix to a deeper part of the wooded area away from the people in the park.

‘C’mon, here’s the food! Bacon! Mmm! Thissa way!’

He spotted Sarah behind the hoix, priming a teleportation device. ‘Who’da like a bitta bacon, hmm?’

The hoix was clearly getting ready to pounce. Just as it coiled, ready to spring, the Doctor threw the piece of bacon away to the left. The hoix went for it, and met Sarah’s teleportation device. It disappeared in a wave of blue light.

‘Where did you send it?’ the Doctor asked.

‘Mr Smith calibrated it for the hoix home world,’ Sarah reply, taking back the bacon.

‘Nice work,’ the Doctor commented as they made their way back to the playpark. 

‘Only has one charge though.’

‘Give it here?’

Sarah handed it over, and he quickly ran his sonic over it. It beeped politely.

‘Ready for constant use,’ the Doctor told her, and handed it back. ‘Charges itself. Just use it wisely, eh? Well, I know you will.’

They reached the park, where Eli was still playing, ignorant and safe away from the events with the hoix. He caught sight of the Doctor, and immediately rushed to him.

‘Daddy!’ he said happily, clamping his arms around the Doctor’s waist in a hug. ‘Can we get food, now?’

‘I told you, I’m not your …’ He suddenly trailed off as Eli looked up at him, expectant. No, he decided. He wouldn’t correct him. ‘Yeah,’ he eventually said, glancing at Sarah, who was smiling. ‘Definitely food time.’

Rule five. To a lonely little boy, being a blood relative, or even the same species, wasn’t exactly high in the criteria for being a daddy. And maybe, just maybe, the Doctor would be okay with him.


	6. Dangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor takes Eli to see Jack, but Eli is suddenly put in direct danger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating's just jumped up!

'Cardiff!' the Doctor announced as they stepped out. 'The most populous city in Wales. Built on a rift in time and space, but my friend, Jack, keeps a close eye on it, apparently. He's got a top secret base, trouble is, I've never been there, so this'll be interesting. Let's see how long it takes us to find the top secret base, hmm?'

Eli giggled. The Doctor led him across the Plass.

'This is the Roald Dahl Plass, named after an extremely good author. Nice guy. Had a fondness for lemons, for some reason. He wrote a special Charlie Bucket story for me, called Charlie and the Time Machine, and signed it.' He paused, thinking about that. 'Really should dig that out. We could read it together whilst you learn to read. How does that sound?'

Eli nodded, beaming. The Doctor realised, not with any sort of panic, that he'd just spoken as though they would be spending a long time together.

He smiled at the thought. Maybe they would be. And he was beginning to accept that.

'Now, top secret base,' the Doctor mused, continuing down to the water side. He turned, checking his surroundings, and saw a small tourist information office at the end, tucked away discreetly. 'Now, _that_ would the entrance to my top secret base. What d'you reckon?'

'Yeah!' Eli enthused.

'Let's go and say hi,' the Doctor said, and stepped inside.

They were immediately surrounded by a million tourist pamphlets and postcards, and there was no one behind the desk. The Doctor strode forward and lifted up Eli to sit on it before he rang the bell. Roughly ten seconds later Ianto appeared, looking startled.

'Doctor,' he realised.

'Is this the location of your top secret base?' the Doctor wondered.

'Um, yes,' Ianto confessed. 'How long did that take you?'

'About twenty seconds,' the Doctor told him. 'Is Jack in?'

'He is, sir,' Ianto replied. 'Come through.'

'Oi, less of the sir, okay?' the Doctor said, picking up Eli to carry him, but Ianto wasn't even listening as he led them through the back, beyond a rolling door and into a very metal and very grotty-looking place.

'Eww,' Eli said loudly.

'I know the feeling,' the Doctor replied, looking around just as Jack appeared.

'Doctor!' he exclaimed as he bounded towards him, and immediately saw the child.

'Captain, disinfectant,' the Doctor commented, looking pointedly around the Hub. 'Works wonders. you should try it.'

Jack ignored that, still staring at Eli, who was still being carried by the Time Lord. A small smirk appeared on his face. 'Wow, who was she, Doc? Was she pretty?'

The Doctor rolled his eyes. 'Not mine!'

Jack's smirk only widened. 'Hey, little guy,' he greeted. 'I'm Jack.'

'I'm Eli,' the boy replied.

'Nice to meet you,' Jack said, holding out his hand for the little boy to shake. Eli did. Jack looked back up at the Doctor. 'What are you doing here?'

'Need a word,' the Doctor said, and nodded to Eli. 'Is there somewhere Eli can play?'

'In here? You're kidding,' Jack said, but called for Ianto, who appeared almost immediately. 'Can you look after Eli for a sec?'

'Of course, sir,' Ianto replied, and took Eli. The Doctor waved at Eli, who waved back, before the Doctor followed Jack up to his office.

'So, the kid?' Jack wondered as the door closed.

'Seriously,' the Doctor said, looking around the room. 'Even a bit of metal polish. Lick of paint?'

'Doctor, the kid,' Jack prompted.

'Yeah,' the Doctor said, and dropped to sit down in the nearest chair, putting his feet on Jack's desk. 'He's four. I found him in a crashed spaceship. He's got no one left, and I've been trying to find him a home. Nowhere and no one is interested.'

'So you thought you'd try me?' Jack wondered. 'Did you seriously think I'd say yes? You do know what we do here, right? Every minute is a hazard. I can't look after a four-year-old.'

The Doctor sighed, running his hand through his hair. 'I know.'

'If you knew that, then why did you come here?' Jack asked seriously. 'I take it you're keeping him, then.'

'I … I don't know,' the Doctor confessed.

'Why not?'

'I'm not sure I can … Well, I have no idea what I'm doing.'

'You just described every new parent on planet Earth,' Jack told him. 'Besides, when has that ever stopped you?'

The Doctor shook his head. 'It's just … My life's too dangerous. He'll get hurt.'

'Oh, I get it,' Jack said. 'You're here so I'll say things that can convince you to adopt him.'

'I'm not …'

'What d'you want me to say? That I think you'd make a great dad? Cos you would.'

'But …'

'But nothing, Doctor,' Jack interrupted again. 'You said it on the Valiant – maybe you need someone to care for, and hey, here he is. He needs to be cared for. You can teach him; you can raise him; you can be his dad. What else d'you want me to say?'

There was a brief pause, before the door suddenly opened.

'Jack, problem!' Ianto said quickly and breathlessly. 'It's Janet. I don't know how, but she's out!'

Jack jumped out, grabbing a tranquilliser gun. 'Doc, you may wanna get Eli!'

The Doctor stared at him. 'Who's Janet?'

'Weevil!'

The Doctor's hearts immediately began to pump at ten to the dozen. He darted past Ianto and down the steps to the main Hub, his eyes wide and searching.

'Eli!' he called. 'C'mere!'

The little boy ran across the Hub to meet him. 'What's happening?' he asked.

'Come with me,' the Doctor said quickly, taking his hand to lead him back up to Jack's office. But as they turned, the Doctor registered the weevil blocking the way as Jack and Ianto spilled down the stairs.

'Janet!' Jack called, the tranquilliser gun raised. 'Back off!'

Janet didn't care, launching herself at Jack and Ianto. Jack fired the tranquilliser gun, but completely missed.

'This way!' the Doctor instructed Eli, pulling him towards the Hub entrance. But the movement caught Janet's attention, and as Jack and Ianto struggled to their feet she launched herself at the Doctor and Eli. The Doctor shoved Eli out of the way, just in time to be thrown to the floor by the full weight of Janet, crushing him and slamming his head on the metal floor.

'Doctor!' Jack yelled. 'Ianto, get more tranquillisers!'

'Daddy!' Eli wailed, making the Doctor panic even more.

'Eli, run!' the Doctor gasped out desperately, his head spinning. He heard Eli run away. He tried to push Janet off but she was too powerful, and her sharp fangs were perilously close to his neck …

He stopped trying push her off and instead clamped his hands on his neck to protect himself. Almost immediately he felt the teeth plunge through his hand – trying to get to his jugular. He cried out in pain as what could only be the warm feeling of blood began to spill out across his hand and neck. The urge to pull the bitten hand away was overwhelming, but he forced it to stay rigid, battling the urge to pass out …

'Janet, get off!' Jack cried, appearing behind Janet and attempting to wrestle her off.

'Eli!' the Doctor cried again, barely able to get his name out. Janet had penetrated his neck somewhere, he could feel it. He tried to kick her off again, but her teeth were still locked into his hand and pushing in deeper with every passing millisecond …

Janet suddenly jumped off of him and sent Jack flying. The ensuing sound was so loud that the Doctor didn't need to see him to know the sheer force of the impact had knocked Jack out.

Then, it was only Eli left. Janet was looking around, as if trying to find where he'd run off to.

'Janet,' the Doctor begged, the word causing something to gurgle in his throat. 'Me, here, take me …'

Janet didn't seem to care. She ran off in pursuit of the little boy.

Something inside the Doctor exploded. Knowing Eli was on his own, about to be assailed and killed by the weevil; a strange sort of primal emotion reached up and took his brain and body in a iron grip as one thought lodged itself directly into his brain …

Protect Eli.

He had to protect Eli.

Nothing else mattered.

He forced himself up from the floor. His vision was blurring out, his hand and neck were screaming and the world was pulsating, but he didn't care. The only thing he cared about was Eli. He staggered forward with his right hand still clasped to his neck, but fell over almost immediately. He was about to black out, he knew it. But he wouldn't. There was no _way_ he was going to let Janet get Eli.

Eli suddenly screamed, distant. That propelled him forward, lurching in the general direction of the sound.

* * *

Jack woke up, and immediately panicked.

There was blood on the floor in front of him, and Ianto, the Doctor, Eli and Janet were nowhere to be seen.

'Ianto!' Jack shouted, but got no response. He pulled out his gun and ran towards the sound of the commotion in the direction of the archive rooms. He arrived in time to see Eli backed into a corner, crying for his dad, with Janet looking at him, as if sizing him up. The Doctor was in the doorway, bleeding and looking as though he was about to pass out, and Ianto was desperately trying to subdue Janet with the tranquilliser gun held out, but she was moving too much for him to get a clear shot.

'Janet!' Jack cried, his gun levelled and pointing at her. 'Back off!'

She coiled, ready to pounce. The Doctor immediately launched himself forward, past Janet to dive onto Eli.

'Yan! Shoot!' Jack yelled. Ianto took the shot, and it hit Janet. Immediately she became more angry, and looked back to the Doctor, who was cocooning Eli, as still and strong as a rock. She looked as though she was about to pounce again, so Jack abandoned his gun and dived onto her, wrestling her to the ground. After twenty seconds of struggling, Janet finally succumbed to the tranquilliser and stilled.

'Jesus Christ,' Jack breathed, and looked at the Doctor. 'Doc? Eli?'

The Doctor still didn't move, clinging desperately onto Eli. 'Is he safe?' was all he asked, his voice croaky.

'Janet's down, it's okay,' Jack assured him.

'Eli?' the Doctor asked the boy hoarsely. 'Not hurt?'

'No,' the little boy responded.

The utter potency of the look of relief on the Doctor's face was something Jack had seldom seen on him before. With his jaw smeared with red, he looked up at Jack, briefly smiled, and passed out.

* * *

Jack had winced as he read the results of the Doctor's scan, who was still unconscious, covered in blood and now laid out in the autopsy room. His hand had finally calmed down from the swelling and bruises of varying purple and black were appearing. There was a deep gouge in his palm, and more cuts were placed in a clear teeth formation across his hand of varying depth. Janet had bitten clean through his hand, destroying everything in her path including some blood branches and arches and his third metacarpal bone. The Doctor's airway had been nicked in his neck, but he didn't seem to be struggling too much to breathe. Time Lord thing, Jack reasoned, so he didn't panic. Thankfully Janet hadn't pushed hard enough to do too much damage to his neck – she'd just missed his artery.

'Eli's still crying,' Ianto announce, walking in. 'I gave him something to eat and drink and reassured him, but I think he thinks the Doctor's dead. He won't believe me. He kept saying that everyone he loves goes away.' He saw the scans. 'Wow, is that his hand?'

'It _was_ his hand,' Jack amended. 'I've stopped the bleeding but I can't do much else. He can probably fix this in the Tardis, I just need to clean him up a bit before Eli can come in. How much did he see?'

'He says he saw Janet on the Doctor, then the Doctor diving onto him. I don't think he saw anything too graphic.'

Jack sighed. 'Something, I s'pose,' he said, pulling out some wipes to try and get some of the blood off. 'Stay with Eli.'

'Yes, sir,' Ianto responded, and left. Jack cleaned the Doctor's blooded hand, then fixed it straight and firmly wrapped it with bandages before starting on his neck, just as the Time Lord's eyes snapped wide open.

'Eli!' he gasped immediately, struggling to get up.

'Eli's fine!' Jack said, pinning him down. 'Relax!'

'But ... '

'Stay still,' Jack ordered firmly, holding him by his shoulders. 'Eli's fine, not a scratch on him. I need to clean you up so he can see you.'

The Doctor visibly relaxed a little, but let out a long groan. 'That _really_ hurts,' he rasped.

'Yeah, your hand isn't in a pretty shape,' Jack said.

The Doctor looked at it, and realised was stiff in bandages. 'What's happened?'

'She bit clean through your hand and pulverised everything in her path. She's nicked your airway, too.'

'S'ok,' the Doctor replied. 'Will heal.'

'I can't do anything for your hand, I don't have the equipment.'

'Yeah, Tardis,' the Doctor said, and groaned again with gritted teeth, this time with a little more gusto. 'Hurts,' he said again, hoarse.

Jack quickly dived for a drawer, and pulled out some painkillers. 'Which one?' he asked, holding them in front of the Doctor's face. The Doctor looked briefly, and pointed at the one on the right with his left hand. Jack nodded, and a few moments later injected it into the Doctor's right arm. He groaned again, but after a few moments blinked rapidly and refocused.

'Need to see Eli,' the Doctor said anxiously, his voice croaking as he tried to move again.

'First I need to get your blood off of you,' Jack said. 'So stop moving.'

The Doctor finally seemed to obey and stopped trying to get up, but he was still tense. Jack continued to wipe at his neck as the Doctor winced every time he neared the puncture marks.

'Looks like you're programming the Tardis one-handed for a while,' Jack joked, trying to calm him down. 'Hey, you could teach Eli to fly the Tardis, and he could help.'

There was an uncomfortable pause.

'What?' Jack asked. 'Not having second thoughts, are you?'

The Doctor ignored that. 'Where is he?' He was trying to move again.

'He's with Ianto. He's a bit upset. I think he thinks you're dead, so let me clean you up and _stop moving,'_ Jack emphasised.

The Doctor fell still and silent, just lying there as Jack worked on his neck, then dressed it.

'Okay, you're good.'

'Get him,' the Doctor said.

Jack left to retrieve Eli. When he got back. The Doctor was sitting up, peeking at his hand, which caused him to wince.

'Daddy?' Eli asked suddenly. The Doctor looked up to see the boy at the top of the stairs, Jack behind him. He'd clearly been crying.

'C'mere,' the Doctor said. Eli moved to him, and Jack lifted him up to sit on the bed beside the Doctor. Eli immediately hugged him, all the while staring at his thickly-bandaged hand, his neck with a sticky gauze pad and the patches of blood on the Time Lord's clothes.

'I thought you went and left me,' Eli moaned.

'Nah,' the Doctor replied.

'My fault.'

'How can it possibly be your fault?' the Doctor asked, bewildered.

'The thing … the thing hurt you cos you were saving me,' Eli muttered, his face buried into the Doctor's jacket. 'I kill people.'

'No, you don't, don't you _ever_ say that,' the Doctor chastised, kissing his forehead. 'I got myself into this mess. Did you see her attack me?'

Eli shook his head.

'Good,' the Doctor said.

'So you're not gonna die?'

'No, definitely not,' the Doctor replied. 'I'm too busy to die.'

Eli giggled.

'Now go and play,' the Doctor said.

'Okay. I love you,' Eli said, smiled up at him and ran off. The Doctor watched him go. He seemed very subdued, Jack noted.

'Are you okay?' he asked the Time Lord.

'I can't.

'What?'

'I just … I can't.'

'Can't what?'

'I can't look after him.'

'Why not?'

'He nearly died. If you hadn't been there …'

'If I hadn't been here you wouldn't have had this problem in the first place,' Jack told him.

'But he nearly died.'

Jack gazed at him. 'You really love him, don't you?'

The Doctor didn't answer that.

'He wouldn't have been in that danger because you wouldn't have let him be. Think about that,' Jack advised, getting up. 'Call me if you need help.'

* * *

For five minutes the Doctor sat still and silent, reaching the one conclusion he didn't want to make.

Eli had been in _serious_ danger. If Jack and Ianto hadn't been there, he'd probably have died a very horrific death. And this was all painfully normal. Things like this happened to the Doctor on a daily basis. Jack and Sarah had convinced the Doctor that Eli would be protected, but now he wasn't so sure.

Eli would be _much_ better off if Martha found him a UNIT family. Safer. Happier. Healthier.

Rule six. No matter how much you come to love them, sometimes it's best to let them go.


	7. Alphabets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor decides to put Eli on Earth, but wants to teach him English first. However, his wound has become infected, and the Doctor collapses.

It took him two hours to deal with his wounds, as it was made slightly more problematic by only having one hand. Eventually he managed to get his hand sealed, gave himself a few extra-strength painkillers, and re-bandaged his wound.

Now for the hard bit.

He picked up Eli from Torchwood, and quickly left into the vortex before Jack could start up any conversation about what he was going to do now. He didn't need any judgemental looks.

Whilst Eli had a snack, the Doctor collected up his toys from various places in the TARDIS, putting them all into a bigger-on-the-inside bag. He left the bag in the console room, and returned to Eli.

'How d'you like Earth, then?' he asked the boy.

'It's pretty,' the boy said.

'How would you feel about living there?'

'With you?'

The Doctor smiled sadly, but didn't reply to that. 'So you'd like to?'

'Yeah.'

'Okay.'

The Doctor got up. Clearly he'd been sitting down for too long as he suddenly felt a little dizzy. Not thinking anything about it, he was about to go and program the TARDIS when a thought struck him.

He couldn't leave Eli on Earth without him knowing some English, that would just be counter-productive. He'd teach him a little bit before he found Martha, he decided.

* * *

The Doctor was feeling a little hot as he and Eli sat down in the living room, but he was far more focused on the boy. He got some paper and a pencil, and wrote the English alphabet down.

'I'm going to teach you a little bit of English,' he said in Haxun. 'So from now on I'm going to speak in English.'

'Okay,' the boy said.

'This is the alphabet,' he said in English, pointing at the piece of paper. 'There's a song to go with it. Learn to love it,' he said, gesturing to make his point. 'A, B, C, D, E, F, G …' He pointed to each letter in turn. 'H, I, J, K, L, M, N. O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.'

Eli laughed, delighted. 'Cha-coo.'

'In English,' the Doctor gently reminded him.

'English,' Eli repeated with a slight Haxun accent.

'I'll sing it again. A, B, C, D, E, F, G …'

After three rounds of singing, Eli began to sing with him. Within twenty minutes he was starting to recognise the letters, and understand English a bit better. The Doctor didn't quite know how long it normally took a human child to learn another language, but it seemed astonishingly fast.

'What letter's this?' the Doctor asked, pointing at the K.

'K,' Eli replied.

'And this?'

'T.'

'Good,' the Doctor said, smiling with his thumbs up.

'Good!' Eli agreed in English, also sticking his thumbs up.

The Doctor grinned. 'Okay. Short break?'

'No, I want ko-cha'hin,' Eli said, mixing up his English and Haxun.

'You want more,' the Doctor corrected.

'Yeah. More. Please, more English.'

'Okay,' the Doctor conceded. His head was starting to hurt, and he was feeling a bit tired. But again, he ignored it in favor of Eli. 'Have you ever written anything before?' he asked, gesturing with the pencil.

Eli just looked confused. The Doctor tried again, pretending to write something down on the paper. 'Writing,' he emphasised.

Eli still looked confused. The Doctor rapidly decided that meant he hadn't.

'Okay,' the Doctor said, and gave him the pencil. He guided Eli's hand to copy the A. 'Here you go, just copy them, okay? Copy. And say the letter as you write it. Now do the B.'

'Okay, B,' Eli said, and copied the B. It was clearly the first time he'd ever held a writing implement. It was a little shaky and oversized, but quite remarkable for his first ever attempt at writing anything, the Doctor thought.

Eli continued his way through the alphabet, only stopping looking up at the Doctor for approval after each letter. The Doctor just smiled at him, but he was starting to lose his focus. He dropped his head into his hands, blinking rapidly.

'Daddy, are you okay?' Eli asked in English.

He looked up and smiled. 'Yeah. Might need to go to the, er, sick room in a bit,' he told Eli. 'Bit light-headed.'

'Okay,' Eli said, continuing with his N.

It was no good, the Doctor thought. His head was _really_ starting to hurt. He'd have to get a painkiller and check himself over a bit later after Eli had gone. The painkiller he'd used was quite a powerful one; it had probably lowered his immune system and he was having a mild illness as a result.

'Just going to the, um, sick room,' the Doctor said, gesturing vaguely with his hand in the general direction. He got up, and made his way out of the door.

Rule seven. Try to make rules as quick as possible, because making rules is difficult when you're unconscious and you're leaving your four-year-old all alone.

He collapsed somewhere near the infirmary.

* * *

Eli heard a loud clang, and then silence. Intrigued, he got up, walked out of the living room and saw his new daddy lying on the floor in an awkward mess, not moving.

'Daddy?' he asked.

He didn't respond.

Worried, Eli moved forward and stooped down next to him, poking him. 'Daddy.'

He still didn't move.

'No, no, Daddy,' Eli begged. 'Please. Please wake up.'

He didn't.

Eli stayed still for a moment, staring at him. Help, he realised. He needed to get help.

He got up and ran to the flying room where he'd smeared the baby food. There on the console was the phone his daddy had used to call someone. Thinking fast, he got up on tiptoes and retrieved the phone.

The ship suddenly seemed to pulsate around him. He looked down at the phone in his hands, surprised to see it was already calling someone. He held it to his ear.

* * *

Martha was just finishing her lunch when suddenly her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket, and for the second time that day saw it was the Doctor.

She answered. 'Calling me again?' she said, laughing.

There was a brief scuffle, but otherwise silence.

'Hello?' Martha tried. 'Doctor?'

 _'Hello?'_ It was Eli, Martha realised.

'Hello, Eli, it's Martha,' she said, smiling. He must've got a hold of the phone. She was probably going to have to get used to this.

 _'Martha, Martha, um …'_ He sounded a bit panicked.

'Eli? Are you okay?'

_'Um … Daddy doesn't feel good.'_

'Daddy doesn't feel good?' Martha repeated, shocked.

_'No. He's sleeping on the floor. He won't wake up.'_

Martha sat up, alarmed. 'He's passed out?'

_'Yeah. He's not feeling good, um, he was gonna go to the sick room but he fell over.'_

'Where are you?'

_'Um, Tardis. I'm … I'm … doing the alphabet but he fell poorly.'_

'Do you know if you landed anywhere?' she asked anxiously.

_'Um, no. No, don't think so, no.'_

Martha's heart sank. If they were in the vortex, there was no way she could reach him. 'Okay, are you with Daddy?'

_'No, he's on the floor and I'm in the, um, flying room. Please help him.'_

'Okay, go to him.'

_'Okay, cos he's on the floor.'_

'Don't hang up, okay?' Martha said quickly. 'Stay with me.'

_'Okay.'_

'Are you with him, yet?'

_'Yeah. Daddy?'_

Martha waited with baited breath, internally panicking. 'Is he moving?'

_'No, he's not moving.'_

'Is he breathing?'

_'Um, yeah, yeah, he's breathing but it's fast.'_

'It's fast?'

_'Yeah.'_

'Okay, put your hand over the left side of his chest until you feel his left heart beating. Can you feel it?'

_'Yeah.'_

'Tell me when you feel it beat.'

_'Now-now. Now-now. Now-now. Now-now.'_

Martha winced. That was fast. 'Now check the right side of his chest.'

_'Okay, um, now-now, now-now, now-now.'_

Still very fast, Martha noted. 'Do you know what might've caused it?'

_'Um, no.'_

'Has anything happened to him since I saw you?'

_'Yeah. He hurt his hand.'_

'Hurt his hand? How?'

_'Weevling.'_

'A weevil?'

_'Yeah, it bit him. His arm's gone all red.'_

Martha winced again. It was beginning to sound a lot like septicaemia. 'Okay, don't worry. Make him comfortable, okay? Put his head on something soft. Don't hang up.'

 _'I won't.'_ There was a prolonged pause. _'Okay, he's comfy, now.'_

'Good. Do you know where the infirmary is?'

_'The what?'_

'Infirmary.'

 _'I dunno what that is,'_ Eli replied, sounding upset.

'That's okay,' Martha said calmly. 'Where did Daddy go after he hurt his hand?'

_'The sick room.'_

'Yeah,' Martha said. 'The sick room, go there.'

_'But I can't go from him.'_

'You can, he'll be fine for a little bit, he's just sleeping. I need you to go to the sick room.'

_'Okay. I'll be back in a bit, Daddy, okay?'_

There was movement.

'Are you in the sick room?' Martha asked.

_'Yeah, I just got here.'_

'There's a cupboard at the end of the room, go there.'

_'Okay.'_

'There should be loads of bottle on shelves. Be really, _really_ careful, and look through them for one called Merrem, or Meropenem.'

 _'I can't read,'_ he said, getting upset again.

'It's okay, it's okay,' Martha said quickly. 'Don't worry. Do you know the letters?'

_'Yeah, I know the al-pha-bet cos we did that, but I can't read.'_

'Okay. I need you to look through the shelves for one that goes, M-E-R-O-P-E-N-E-M.'

_'M-E-R what?'_

'Just start with M-E-R, find one with M-E-R on it.'

_'Okay.'_

There was another long pause.

'Have you found anything yet?' Martha asked, trying not to sound anxious.

_'Um, there's one with M-E-R on it but it's a long word.'_

'Can you spell it out for me?'

 _'Yeah. M-E-R … umm ...'_ He began to sing the alphabet to himself until he reached the right letter. _'U! The next letter is U.'_

'No, that's not the one, then. Keep looking.'

_'There another one.'_

'How's that spelt?'

 _'Um, M-E-R-O … umm ... '_ He sang the alphabet to himself again quietly before replying. _'P … E … N … E … M.'_

'Yes, that's the one,' Martha affirmed. 'Be very careful, take it out and keep it safe. Don't drop it. Put it in your pocket.'

_'Okay.'_

'Next, I need you to go into the next room along,' she said next, struggling slightly to remember the layout of the TARDIS Infirmary. 'The equipment cupboard.'

_'Okay.'_

'I need you to find the needle gun. Do you know what a gun looks like?'

_'Yeah. A little gun or a big gun?'_

'A little gun. A little silver gun which is empty on the top.'

_'Okay?'_

'Are you looking?'

 _'Yeah.'_ Some scuffling. _'I found it.'_

'Silver gun?'

_'Yeah.'_

'Okay, push the medicine into the gap in the gun, the pointy bit to the bit you shoot out from.'

_'The barrel?'_

'Yeah,' she said, a little surprised he knew the parts of a gun. He'd come from a war, she quickly reminded herself.

_'Okay, I have to put down the phone now cos else I can't do it.'_

'Just don't hang up, okay?'

_'I won't.'_

There was some more scuffling.

_'I put it in.'_

'Did it click?'

_'Um, yeah.'_

'Okay, run back to Daddy.'

There was movement.

_'Daddy? Daddy, I got a thing and it's gonna make you better.'_

'Is he awake?'

_'No, he's ... he's, um, sleeping.'_

'Okay, put the nozzle of the gun on the side of his neck.'

_'No, but, um, there's a thing on his neck.'_

'What's on his neck?'

_'A sticky bandage.'_

'He hurt his neck? Was it the weevil?'

_'Yeah.'_

'Okay, just put the nozzle on the other side.'

_'Okay.'_

'Now pull the trigger.'

She heard a click and hiss.

_'I did it.'_

'Okay. Is he awake, yet?'

_'No. When will he stop being asleep?'_

'I'm not sure. But he's going to be fine. He'll just sleep for a while. Are you okay?'

_'Yeah. Can I move Daddy? He's all cold on the floor.'_

'He's too heavy for you,' Martha said.

_'I can do it.'_

'Don't, Eli,' Martha said patiently. 'You'll hurt yourself. Get a blanket and put it over him so he won't get cold.'

_'Okay, but he's all wiggly.'_

'He's wiggly!?'

_'Yeah, klo-tom'cha py ha-fa tsui.'_

'What?'

_'Py-likra'tom maino-xija ha –'_

Eli suddenly cut out. Martha checked the phone, but the signal had been lost. She tried calling, but it was just reverting to the dead tone.

'No, no, no,' Martha moaned, and tried calling again. Nothing.

There was only one possible reason that Eli had stopped translating. The Doctor was very, very sick, and now possibly having some sort of seizure.

She tried calling again.

* * *

Eli frowned as Martha's voice disappeared from the phone.

'Martha,' he tried. 'Martha.'

There was nothing but a low persistent tone. He put the phone into his pocket and turned his attentions to his daddy. He was still shivering, like he was cold.

'Daddy, you're cold so you're wiggling,' Eli reasoned, resting a hand on the Time Lord's forehead. He _was_ very cold. 'I'm gonna warm you up and you're gonna stop being asleep.'

He took his daddy's good arm, and pulled him across the floor to the living room. He tried to lift him to get him on the sofa, but he was too heavy, so instead he pulled him to the rug. Breathless, he ran back to retrieve a cushion and a blanket before slipping the cushion under his daddy's head and tucking the blanket around him methodically. He also got one of his toys and slipped it under his daddy's limp arm. He kissed his daddy's forehead, and hugged him. His daddy was still shaking.

'You're gonna be okay, Daddy,' he said, thinking hard about what to do next. Food, he decided. He got up. 'Daddy, I'm gonna get food so you can eat and that'll make you okay. I'm, um, gonna go for a bit but I'll come back really fast, okay?'

Eli ran to the kitchen and got one of the few remaining jars of baby food and a spoon. He went back to his daddy, just about managing to open the jar. He spooned out some, and put it to his daddy's mouth. His daddy didn't react, but he'd stopped shaking.

'Please, Daddy. Eat food. You gotta eat or you'll die, you said so.'

He didn't take it at all. Eventually Eli gave up and abandoned the food, instead retrieving the pen and paper and all the work they'd been doing that afternoon. 'I'm gonna practice really hard now so I know the alphabet loads, okay? Daddy. Daddy?'

Nothing.

'I'm gonna start now. A, B, C, D, E, F, G …'


	8. Phones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor becomes seriously ill, and only Eli can help him.

After hours of repeatedly trying to call the TARDIS, Martha called Jack, frantic.

 _‘Martha Jones,’_ Jack said smoothly as charismatically after he picked up.

‘Jack, we have a _huge_ problem.’

_‘You know I love exploring any problem with you, Martha.’_

Martha ignored his flirtatious banter. ‘Jack, it’s the Doctor.’

_‘What about him?’_

‘Apparently he got bitten by a weevil ...’

Jack sighed. _‘Yeah, I know.’_

‘You know?’

_‘Yeah. It was my weevil.’_

Martha sat up. ‘Jack, does the weevil have any diseases?’

_‘I don’t know.’_

‘You’d better find out sharpish,’ she said. ‘Because the Doctor’s collapsed. I think … well, it sounds like he’s become septic. I need to find out what infection it is.’

 _‘Jesus,’_ Jack blasphemed. _‘But he can’t have. His immune system …’_

‘... Doesn’t mean anything at the moment, Jack,’ Martha completed. ‘He’s passed out, he’s cold, comatose and I think he’s had or having some kind of seizure.

_‘Where’s the Tardis landed?’_

‘It hasn’t, Jack,’ Martha pressed. ‘It’s in the vortex. Eli called me but I lost connection. The translation circuit went. Eli’s all on his own and the Doctor could be dying. I managed to get Eli to give him an antibiotic, but that’s it.’’

_‘I’ll find out. Let me try and call; I’ve got better tech.’_

‘The translation circuit’s not working …’

 _‘I can speak Haxun, don’t worry,’_ Jack replied. _‘Sit tight.’_

* * *

Eli stayed loyally by his daddy’s side for however long it was, reciting the alphabet. Eventually when he knew the alphabet inside-out, he looked at his daddy again, who still hadn’t woken up. He was now very, very pale, apart from his arm, which was swelling and turning red and patchy. He’d stopped wiggling, but his breathing was fast and loud.

Eli rapidly thought, trying to decide what to do. His daddy was broken and needed to be fixed, he reasoned, so he had to do things to try and mend him.

Maybe he was uncomfortable, Eli reasoned. He looked his daddy up and down, wondering what it could be. Maybe if he got his shoes off. People always took their shoes off when they wanted to relax, he reasoned.

He undid the laces and tried, but he ended up dragging his daddy a little across the floor as the feet were so tightly inside the shoes. He then decided to loosen the laces a bit more, and finally managed to slide them off.

‘Daddy, Daddy,’ Eli said. ‘You can wake up, now. I took your shoes off.’

He waited for a moment. His daddy didn’t do anything, so that obviously hadn’t worked.

Cleaning, he realised. Cleaning helped to fix things. Maybe he should clean his daddy.

Eli ran to his scaled-down bathroom and cupped his hands under the tap. Being as careful as he could he returned to his daddy and dropped what little water he had on his face. That was useless. He needed more water.

He went back and forth for a while, carrying water in his palms, and rapidly decided he needed a better method. He ran back to the bathroom and looked around for an alternative. There was a towel on the side.

He ran the wet towel under a tap for a good few minutes until it was absolutely soaked, he returned to his daddy, and wiping his face with it.

‘Daddy,’ Eli prompted, dripping water everywhere. ‘Daddy, wake up.’

He tried wiping everything, including his clothes and hair, and tried calling him again. That didn’t work either.

Eventually he resigned, dropping the towel onto the floor to think again.

He finally reached up to his daddy’s pocket, where he kept that blue pen thing. He pulled it out and fiddled with it, momentarily sticking it in his mouth before trying the buttons. It suddenly burst into bright blue.

Intermittently he tried to run it over his daddy. Although the device was making all manner of beeps, his daddy remained still, and Eli was beginning to become very upset.

‘Daddy,’ he tried again. ‘Daddy, please wake up, I don’t wanna be by my own.’

He didn’t.

‘It’s gonna be okay,’ he told his daddy. ‘Martha said you were gonna sleep a while but that’s okay cos I’m here and I’m gonna take care of you, so don’t worry.’

He sat there for a little bit, playing with his daddy's shoes, putting his hands and feet inside. He tied them as tight as he could in a knot, trying to walk. They were _huge,_ and so heavy he could only just lift his feet. After a few moments he stepped on one of the laces and fell over, and immediately began to cry. After twenty seconds of sobbing, he realised it was fruitless, sniffed and stopped.

He tried to undo the laces, but couldn't.

'Daddy,’ he wailed. 'Can’t geddum off. Daddy, I got stuck.’

Nothing happened.

 So, he stayed resolutely by his daddy’s side, with the shoes stuck on his feet and a red knee from falling over. He eventually became tired, so he curled up under the blanket with his daddy, hugging his arm. He was so cold.

* * *

Eli was woken up by a strange electronic sound from somewhere to his left.

He frowned, sitting up, before realising it was the phone. He picked up the device, confused as to how to answer it. He tried a few buttons.

 _‘Eli? Eli, are you there?’_ a voice asked eventually asked, tinny-sounding. Eli held the phone to his face.

‘Hello? Hello?’ he asked.

 _‘Eli, it’s Jack,’_ Jack said.

‘Jack,’ Eli said. ‘Please help my daddy, he won’t wake up.’

_‘Where is he?’_

‘He’s, um, lied down in front of me and he’s sleeping and he’s sick. I made him comfy, and, um and I put water on him and everything but he’s still sleeping.’

_‘Okay, don’t worry. You’ve done really well. Daddy’s gonna be very proud of you.’_

Eli smiled. ‘When he’ll wake up?’

_‘I don’t know, Eli, but it won’t be long. ‘As soon as he wakes up, you tell him to pilot the Tardis to Earth, okay?’_

‘Okay. Please don’t go.’

 _‘Not going anywhere,’_ Jack assured him. _‘Are you okay?’_

‘M’fine.’

_‘Have you eaten and slept?’_

‘I slept and I ate some bread.’

_‘Go and get some more food.’_

‘But I can’t go.’

_‘He’ll be fine. You gotta look after yourself, cos if you get sick, who’s gonna look after him?’_

‘Oh, yeah,’ Eli realised, looking at his daddy and biting his lip, before heading off to the kitchen still with the phone to his ear.

* * *

For the next eight hours, Jack stayed on the phone with Eli whilst Ianto tried to find out what could have infected the Doctor from Janet’s bite. Jack worked out that the Time Lord had been comatose for at least twenty-four hours, now. Whatever had infected him had completely overwhelmed him.

Between frantic calls from Martha and updates from Ianto, Jack did his best to keep the boy calm, entertained and healthy. Keeping him calm wasn’t a problem – he was a little panicked occasionally as he should be, but he was otherwise composed, practical and helpful. Entertained wasn’t difficult either – Eli was taking great pride in repeating the alphabet to Jack, whilst begging him to speak in English so he could impress his daddy with all his new vocabulary. However, healthy was a slight battle, as he was quite unwilling to leave the Doctor’s side and had to be convinced every time.

It was 6pm when Martha called for the sixteenth time that day.

‘It’s some kind of bacteria in her mouth, something like capnocytophaga canimorsus,’ Jack told her, examining the scanning readouts Ianto had given him ten minutes before. ‘But some kind of weevil-specific bacteria.’

_‘Have you seen it before?’_

‘Never got the chance to, most people who get bit by a weevil die pretty quick from blood loss,’ he told her. ‘We don’t know anything about it.’

 _‘We have to get him back to Earth, Jack …’_ Martha said desperately. _‘If I can see it, I can treat it. How’s he doing?’_

‘He’s still asleep.’

_‘What the hell are we gonna do, Jack?’_

There was a pause. Although neither of them would admit it, they both knew there was absolutely nothing they could do.

 _‘Daddy?’_ the phone to Eli suddenly said.

Jack made sure everyone was on speakerphone. ‘Eli? What’s happening?’

_‘He moved.’_

‘Talk to him.’

 _‘Daddy,’_ he said. _‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Daddy?’_

 _‘Eli? Is that you?’_ the Doctor’s voice asked, like he barely knew what he was saying.

 _'Yeah, Daddy,’_ Eli said.

Jack sat bolt upright. ‘Eli, let me talk to him.’

_‘Okay. Jack wants to talk to you, Daddy.’_

‘Doctor?’ Jack asked quickly. ‘Doctor, it’s Jack.’

_‘Jack …?’_

‘Yeah, remember?’

_‘Yeah.’_

‘Doctor, you’ve _got_ to pilot the Tardis to Earth so we can help you.’

 _‘I can’t …’_ the voice came back.

Jack swore under his breath. ‘Please, c’mon, try.’

_‘S’okay, the ship... should be docking soon.’_

‘What?’

_‘Gotta … get on the ship. Go see … go see the fish people.’_

_‘He’s delirious,’_ Martha said on the other phone. _‘Keep a conversation, don’t challenge him.’_

_‘Daddy, wake up!’_

‘Doctor, stay with me,’ Jack urged.

_‘But … the ship’s coming. Gonna be late again. Always … late to their parties.’_

‘Hey, we don’t need to board the ship,’ Jack said, trying to stay on his level. ‘You’re in a time machine, remember? You can fly it. Can you fly it now?’

The Doctor didn’t seem to register what he’d said. _‘I want … the one with that purple tomatoes,’_ he said. _‘Lotsa toppings. Can you … can you deliver to Gallifrey?’_

Now he thought he was the pizza place, Jack realised. He didn’t quite know whether this was funny, or deeply, deeply worrying. He’d never known the Doctor to be in such a state of delirium before.

‘Sorry, I can’t deliver to Gallifrey,’ Jack told him. ‘I can deliver to Earth. Can you meet me on Earth?’

 _‘Wherezat?’_ He was increasingly slurring his words. _‘Izzat near Jupiter?’_

‘Yeah, just two planets over,’ Jack confirmed. ‘Big and blue with green bits on. You can’t miss it. Can you get here?’

 _‘Nah,’_ he replied. _‘Too small, mah feet won’t fit.’_

Jack wanted to laugh, but he felt far too horrified to do that. ‘But if you don’t come to Earth, you can’t get the pizza.’

_‘Rose?’_

Jack stopped, shocked. ‘Doctor?’

_‘Rose? Are you … are you dere?’_

‘Rose isn’t here, Doctor,’ Jack said.

_‘But I’m so lonely.’_

Jack picked up the phone to Martha. ‘I’ll call you back,’ was all he said, and ended the call. Martha did not need to hear anything the Doctor might say next.

 _‘I miss ‘er,’_ the Doctor continued. _‘Dey all go and leave me.’_

‘Yeah, I know,’ Jack replied.

 _‘She loved pizza. But nanchovies. Never getter ‘nchovies.’_ His slurring was getting worse.

‘I’ll remember that.’

_‘Duntell Donna though, cos ‘er heada burn.’_

‘I know.’

_‘Eli?’_

_‘Daddy?’_

_‘Go toa flyin’ room an’ presh green bu’on.’_

‘What does the green button do, Doctor?’ Jack asked quickly.

_‘Rose’ll tell ya. Gotta shleep.’_

‘No, Doctor, stay with me.’

_‘Nah, haa’irr-n.’_

Jack began to panic. ‘Doctor, stay with me, please.’ There was long pause. ‘Eli? What’s he doing?’

_‘He went to sleep.’_

‘How are his hearts?’

There was a brief pause. Then Eli was panicking. _‘I can’t feel ‘em, Jack!’_

Jack swore under his breath. ‘What about his breathing? Is he breathing?’

_‘No!’_

Jack swore a little more.

_‘He’s going all gold!’_

‘Okay,’ Jack said, desperately trying to organise his thoughts. He had to put his trust in a delirious Doctor. He tried to stay as calm as possible for Eli’s benefit, but his heart was hammering at ten-to-the-dozen in his chest. ‘Go and find this green button, quick.’

 _‘What green button?’_ he asked, and Jack realised that the Doctor had been speaking English at the time.

‘He said there’s a green button in the console room. You gotta find it, Eli.’

_‘The console room!?’_

‘The flying room,’ Jack corrected himself. ‘Run as fast as you can.’

_‘But I can’t go!’_

‘Yes, you can. C’mon, Eli. Find the green button!’

_‘Okay!’_

Jack quickly dialled Martha as Eli ran to the console room. She answered within one ring.

_‘Jack!?’_

‘I think he’s dying, Martha, he told Eli about a button on the console and Eli’s running to press it.’

_‘Please say it’s for Earth!’_

‘I don’t know, I just don’t know,’ Jack said, and looked to the phone with Eli on. ‘Eli!?’

_‘I found a green button!’_

‘Press it!’

_‘Okay!’_

There was the sound of a click. For a moment, nothing happened, and sense of dread built up in Jack. For all he knew, the Doctor had just told Eli where to find the self-destruct. But after a few long, painful seconds, he heard the TARDIS begin to churn. But it wasn’t over yet. Where was she going?

There was a loud thunk. She’d landed.

‘Eli, be careful go out the doors. Where are you?’

The TARDIS door creaked opened. _‘Umm … I don’t know!’_

‘Describe it!’

_‘There’s, um, buildings, and there’s this big thing with letters on it!’_

‘What are the letters!?’

_‘C … O … S … T … C … U … T … T … E … R.’_

There was a Costcutter in the Powell Estate, Jack knew. The TARDIS _had_ to be there.

‘Martha, Powell Estate,’ Jack said urgently.

_‘On it!’_

‘Now go back inside the Tardis, shut the door and wait, okay? We’re coming,’ Jack told Eli.

_‘Okay. Jack, I’m scared.’_

‘You just stay safe and hold on, okay? Martha’s coming as fast as she can. You’ve been amazing, okay? Daddy’s gonna be very, very proud.’

 _‘No, cos he’s gonna die like everyone else dies,’_ Eli sobbed.

Jack considered telling him about regeneration, in order to prepare the boy for it. But he couldn’t. His heart was too heavy. He couldn’t even assure the boy the Doctor wasn’t going to die, because it quite possibly was already too late.

‘Help is coming,’ was all he could say.


	9. Mothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The TARDIS lands, but it's not in 2009.

Martha, ten soldiers, and handful of medical personnel screeched to a halt outside the Powell Estate in a flurry of jeeps. She was out of the door before the vehicle had even stopped, searching frantically for the familiar blue box.

There was a Costcutter next to another small shop, by blocks of flats. It was all still and silent for the time of day, except for a woman with a pushchair trying to avoid the puddles, who'd been rather startled by the arrival of the fleet of jeeps.

'Look for the Tardis!' Martha called to her UNIT employees, who immediately scattered.

* * *

The phone in Eli's hand went dead, and the four-year-old was left alone.

For a moment he stayed by the door, waiting for Martha as he'd been told to, but as time ticked away he began to get more and more anxious, so he ran back to his daddy. His Daddy still wasn't breathing and the weird golden glow was still there.

'Daddy!' Eli squealed, now in tears. 'DADDY! WAKE UP!'

He desperately shook his Daddy's shoulder. As ever, nothing happened.

Suddenly in the distance there was a knock, echoing through the corridors. Eli got up immediately and ran to the Tardis door. He opened it, and there stood a blonde woman – not Martha. She was looking ahead like she was expecting someone else, and jumped a little at the sight of him.

She said something, but he didn't understand it. Not that he particularly cared. 'P-please, please h-help m-my d-daddy,' he sobbed in a high-pitched voice, barely able to get the words out he was crying so much. 'H-he fell o-over and he's r-real s-sick and he's s-sleep-ping.'

She said something else, but didn't move. So to get her going, Eli grabbed her hand and dragged her through the TARDIS to his daddy. The moment they reached him, still lying, glowing on the floor of the living room, the woman gasped.

'Doctor!' she said, Eli understood that. He desperately tried to access the English he'd learnt.

'Help, p-please!'

* * *

Three minutes later the estate had been searched. No blue box.

Martha called Jack immediately. 'Jack, I can't find the Tardis!'

 _'She's right opposite the Costcutter,'_ Jack said.

Martha looked opposite the Costcutter again, but it was a gaping space. 'This Tardis isn't here, Jack!'

There was a brief pause. _'I've lost connection to Eli,'_ Jack said.

'What do we do, Jack? _Where's_ the Tardis!? Where else might he land that has a Costcutter!?'

Another brief pause. _'Oh no.'_

'What?'

_'I think they're there … they're just … not in 2009.'_

* * *

Jackie Tyler was having a bizarre day.

That morning, Rose had turned up, unannounced as per usual. The Doctor had gabbled something about his blue box thingamy, hugged Rose and left. Rose had then explained the Doctor had to take his blue box for repairs, which could take a couple of months, and he'd dropped back to pick her up in a few days after the repairs were done so she wasn't standing in a spaceship garage for weeks.

Rose had then gone out to source some new clothes. Jackie had then left to get some food to cater for Rose's potential prolonged stay, a spring in her step, and returned to find the Doctor's ship parked in its usual spot. Immediately her heart had sank at the thought that Rose wouldn't be staying for as long as she'd hoped. She'd sighed, and gone to the flat expecting the meet the eager-to-leave Doctor, but he wasn't there. So she'd returned to the blue box to wait for a few minutes, but he still hadn't come out. So, she'd decided to knock, hopefully to tell him to get lost for a few days so she could spend some time with her daughter.

Now, she somehow had the Doctor's comatose body in front of her, and a boy who looked quite like the Doctor screaming for help in some foreign language.

'Rose!' she said down the phone. 'You gotta get back 'ere right now!'

_'What? Why?'_

'It's the Doctor! He's turned up and he's unconscious and he's got this kid with 'im!'

_'Wait, what?'_

'It looks bad, Rose, he's glowin' like that stuff at Christmas!'

_'Oh my god. Mum, just stay there!'_

* * *

Rose got back to to the Powell Estate in record time, and went straight to the TARDIS. There she found her mum sitting on the TARDIS living room sofa, her hand holding the Doctor's wrist, with a small boy clinging onto her, crying.

'I've got a pulse but he ain't breathin',' she told Rose. 'I 'ad to do CPR, I think he's really sick. It's okay, sweetheart,' she directed to the boy, who was still crying.

Rose decided to temporarily skip past the confusion of the boy. 'Doctor!' she cried, dropping to the Time Lord. He was whiter than snow, and as her mum had said, he wasn't breathing. She checked his hearts. They were painfully quiet, but at least they were beating. His hand was thickly bandaged, and a quick peek under the gauze told her that he'd hurt it quite badly. It was evident he'd been like this for a while from the bedraggled state of him – his hair matted and saggy from days old gel, and stubble on his chin. To add to the confusion, he was wearing a blue suit – not his usual brown.

'I thought he was goin' to a garage?' Jackie asked, and looked at the boy. 'How …?'

'I dunno, but we've gotta get him off the floor,' Rose said. 'Get him to the flat, then we'll worry 'bout the other stuff.'

* * *

Luckily there was no one around to witness them haul an unconscious man out of a police box and through a London estate. In an eerie reproduction of Christmas they managed to get him up the steps and into the flat, with the boy talking in an alien language with only smatterings of English, following them every step of the way, trying in all ways he could to help.

Her mum still had the stethoscope from Christmas, so Rose checked his hearts. They were both beating, but very, very quietly. He also wasn't breathing, and he was lit up a little with golden energy. She knew the gold light was a danger sign, but otherwise she had no idea what any of it really meant. However, his hearts were beating and that was all she had to really go on. She had to assume that if he hadn't regenerated and his hearts were beating, then he was still alive. There wasn't much else she could do.

There was something not quite right about this, though, Rose mused. Never mind the child, the Doctor looked older. And where had he got the blue suit? He was only supposed to go to a garage, not retailor himself.

Regardless, they settled him into bed, and when Rose was satisfied he was okay, they finally went to get a cup of tea, eventually managing to get the boy to come away from the Doctor.

'Can you speak English?' Rose asked, aware of the fact that him not translating was a very bad sign for the Doctor.

'English alphabet,' the boy said with an alien accent. 'Learn … small.'

'You know a little bit?'

The boy nodded, repeatedly looking to the room the Doctor was in.

'What's your name?'

'Eli.'

'I'm Rose, and this is Jackie,' she said. 'D'you know what happened?'

'Daddy chan-poi tsh'ik a weevling,' he told her, dropping between languages as he spoke. She had no idea what the second language was, but she had picked up a _very_ vital word.

'... Daddy?' she repeated, shocked.

Eli pointed to the Doctor's room. 'Daddy. Gonna be good?'

'He's gonna be fine, yeah?' she eventually managed to say after a moment of internal panicking. She deliberately avoided her mum's gaze. 'Where's your mummy, Eli?'

'Mummy dead,' the boy said.

Rose instinctively hugged him. While she was holding the boy she subtly checked his chest. She could only feel one heart. If this _was_ the Doctor's son, did that mean Eli was part-human?

He pulled away. 'Gonna go Daddy,' he said, and ran back into the Doctor's room.

'You didn't tell me 'e 'ad a kid!' Jackie said, wide-eyed.

'He doesn't, Mum,' Rose replied, still stunned.

'Then where …'

'I dunno!' Rose replied, a rational explanation trying to sort itself out in her head. 'Look, I dunno but he looks older. Maybe he's from the future? Maybe Eli is his future son.'

'But if he's from the future, then where are you?' Jackie wanted to know.

At her mother's words, a theory hit Rose right between the eyes.

If the Doctor _was_ from the future; if partially-human Eli _was_ his son; if Rose herself was missing; if Eli's mother was dead.

Eli might be _her son._

No, she reasoned. That was stupid. Eli would recognise her.

Unless she'd died when he was very young. Then he might be.

She decided not to voice the theory to her mum.

* * *

Days passed, and the Doctor stayed comatose. At the end of the first day the golden glow had receded. It was then Rose and Jackie looked properly under the bandages on his hand, at a deep, horrible wound that was clearly infected somehow. Despite how awful it looked, they had to bite their lips and deal with it. They had taken Eli with them to the pharmacy to get the Doctor some fresh bandages so they could change them. Despite his reluctance to leave his daddy, Eli did enjoy the trip out.

At the end of the second day, the Doctor was a bit less pale. Jackie tried to feed him or give him some tea, but he wasn't taking anything. So instead Rose and Jackie concentrated on looking after the boy. Rose was finding herself becoming increasingly attached to him, whilst knowing full well that he in fact might be her son. Bizarrely, she couldn't work out whether she wanted that or not. If he _was_ her son, then she was dead. But if he wasn't her son, then that … well, it was a little disappointing, she had to admit.

She could only wait and wonder until the Doctor woke up.

The third day, and the Doctor began to breathe again. His temperature went up and some colour returned to his cheeks. It was clear that whatever he was going through, he'd made it through the worst of it.

At the end of the fourth day, Eli's broken English suddenly perfected itself as the translation circuit came back, although he insisted that he needed to learn more and more English. He was very smart. Must've been something to do with his gallifreyan brain, Rose pondered, before quickly chastising herself. She wasn't heading down that road until she knew exactly where, and _who,_ the boy had come from.

However, by the end of the fifth day, Rose had almost fully convinced herself that the child was her's. The Doctor had some _serious_ explaining to do. Potentially having a son with the Doctor was something she would, after the initial shock, love, but she had to be dead for that to be true.

* * *

If the Doctor had stopped to think rather than concerning himself with moving on Eli as fast as possible, he would have realised that using high-strength painkillers would cause his usually fairly indestructible immune system to be suppressed to that of a human level, thereby allowing any bacteria Janet had to infect him without much resistance.

As such, even with Martha's antibiotics, his septicaemia had ballooned into fully-blown sepsis within just a few hours. His blood pressure had plummeted, and he had then entered septic shock.

Things had then been very hazy for a while, bits of occurrences assaulting his askew senses until his immune system had then started attacking his own brain, and he'd very nearly died. He'd automatically shut himself down into a healing coma to try and protect himself.

Finally, he woke up with a lacklustre grip on reality. He opened his eyes, and found himself lying in a bed. A very familiar bed, in a room with very familiar décor, but he couldn't quite place it through his mixed-up head. He couldn't remember what had happened, either. Where had he been?

He'd been on the TARDIS, with … Eli.

Eli.

The name flashed through his head and immediately he began to panic. He was about to get up to rip the world apart to find him, when suddenly the door opened and Rose Tyler walked in.

Before he had a chance to process that, she flicked on the light, which immediately blinded him.

'Oh, sorry!' Rose said, realising what she'd done as he winced. She turned it off again, and instead turned on the slightly duller bedside lamp as she sat beside him. 'Are you okay?'

The Doctor stared at her, wide-eyed. His hearts simultaneously skipped their beats, and all of his breath seemed to be instantaneously sucked out of his lungs. It was her. Rose. Acting perfectly normally. How did that happen?

He tried to speak, but his mouth didn't seem to be working. He could barely feel his limbs he was so weak. All he could do was stare at her, bewildered, mute and paralysed.

She looked very concerned. 'C'mon, say somethin'.'

He tried. He really, _really_ tried. But he couldn't. All he could manage was a little high-pitched whine.

'Oh god,' she moaned, hugging him and brushing back his hair. 'You'll be okay. Go back to sleep,'

He did, hoping it would all make a bit more sense when he woke up.

* * *

When he woke up feeling a little sharper, he was in the same place. It was Jackie's flat. _Definitely_ Jackie's flat. How exactly had he ended up in Jackie's flat?

For one wild moment, the Doctor seriously considered the idea that he had never actually woken up from Christmas 2005, and Martha, Donna, and all the rest were in fact all part of some crazy, complex dream.

 _Surely_ that couldn't be the case?

'Rose?' he asked in a cracked voice, partially excited, and partially terrified.

'Daddy!' a voice replied happily.

'Eli?' he asked, looking at the boy who commenced almost suffocating him in a huge hug. Seconds later, Rose Tyler appeared, grinning.

'Hey, how you feelin'?' she asked, and waited for a reply.

After a moment he realised he'd been staring at her unblinkingly for just a tad longer than a sane person would. 'Um, hello.'

She widened her grin. That grin. 'How're you feelin'?' she tried again.

'Daddy, Daddy, you got bitted by the weevling and you fell over and got real sick,' Eli said quickly.

Being called Daddy didn't really click with the Doctor as something that would alarm Rose, although his brain was slowly beginning to sharpen up. 'Can I have a … thing? Drink?'

'I'll get it!' Eli yelled happily and ran off, leaving the Doctor with Rose. Not quite focused yet and with weak limbs, he experimentally pushed a finger into her arm. She was solid. Didn't mean she wasn't a hallucination, though. He'd met many solid hallucinations in his time.

Rose looked a little pained. 'You … surprised to see me?'

The Doctor didn't answer that. 'What … What year am I in?' he asked, dazed.

'2006,' Rose replied, her voice breaking a little. 'It's June.'

The Doctor's messed-up head finally realised what was going on. Back with Rose, he'd dropped her off on Earth in June 2006 and gone to do the TARDIS repairs. He had no idea how he and Eli had got here, though. 'Ah. Yeah.'

He had to go. Right now. He tried to move, but his entire body was rebelling.

'Hey,' Rose said, stopping him. 'You've been really, really ill. Just relax.'

'I've gotta go,' he mumbled, trying to move again. The whole moving thing wasn't really working.

'Please,' Rose said.

He stopped and looked at her, and for a moment he just gazed into her eyes. She was just like he remembered. And it hurt a bit. '... How long have I been out?' he eventually asked.

'Five days at least,' Rose replied. She looked sad. 'I dunno exactly, we found you on the floor in the Tardis with Eli cryin' his eyes out. You looked like you'd been there a while. I think Eli looked after you.'

'Sorry,' the Doctor said. 'Has Eli been here all the time?'

'Yeah.'

'He's okay?'

'Yeah.' There was a brief pause before she spoke again. 'He's not … I mean, he's not … related to me?'

The Doctor's eyes shot open. 'Oh, no! No. No-no-no. No. No. Not related to you.'

The Doctor couldn't quite work out if she looked relieved or disappointed at that. 'Oh. He's yours, then?'

The Doctor's eyes, impossibly, widened even further. 'No! No. He's not mine, either.'

Rose frowned. 'But he calls you Daddy.'

'He's an orphan,' the Doctor said quickly. His brain was rapidly sharpening, now. 'He was the sole survivor of a crash. I found him. He's got a bit attached.'

'Oh. Are you from the future?'

Still as smart, the Doctor mused. 'Yeah.'

'How far?'

'A few years.'

'Um … and where am I?'

The Doctor had to rapidly conceive of a valid lie. 'Oh, you're … on holiday. Trip to Gancha Four. Sunbathing.'

'Without you?'

'Oh, you know me. Sunbathing's not really my thing,' the Doctor said. 'Boring. Left you to it.'

She laughed. That had made her happy, although he felt terrible for lying to her. He wasn't in the habit of lying to his companions. Especially not her. 'What happened? You nearly died.'

'I got bit by a weevil,' he replied, indicating his hand with a nod. At least he didn't have to lie about that. 'Used an extra-strength painkiller which compromised my immune system, and then I was infected. Went septic. Very stupid of me.'

'You? Doin' somethin' stupid?' Rose asked, grinning.

'I know, I know,' he said, looking sheepish.

She laughed, leaning down to hug him and consequently engulfing him in her smell. It all felt very strange.

He _had_ to leave.

Eli came back in, immediately joining in with the hug. Just as Rose went to let go, the Doctor held on. Just for a bit longer than he should.

'Daddy, are you okay now?' Eli asked when they finally parted.

'Yeah,' the Doctor replied.

'See, I told you he'd be fine,' Rose said to the boy, hugging him tightly. Eli giggled, and she smiled.

'We need to go, Eli,' the Doctor suddenly said.

Eli looked disappointed. 'Why?' he asked.

'We're potentially causing a paradox by being here,' the Doctor replied.

'You can't,' Rose said anxiously. 'Don't be an idiot. Please.'

The Doctor rapidly had to concede. Not because she'd won him over, but because moving his limbs was proving to be quite difficult. 'I can't really … move,' he confessed.

'That's okay,' Rose said. 'Movin' is for losers.'

He smiled at that.

'You wanna get up or d'you wanna sleep some more?' Rose asked.

'Get up,' the Doctor replied. 'Circulation.'

'Okay,' Rose said, and slipped her arms beneath his armpits. 'Ready? One, two, three …'

With a groan, she pulled him upright.

'Bloody hell, you've put on some pounds in those few years,' she grunted, staggering under his weight.

'Thanks,' the Doctor breathed.

Eli moved around to push on his leg in an attempt to support him. It was only then both the Doctor and Rose simultaneously realised that with the lack of Howard's pyjamas, her mum had just stripped him down to shirt and boxers.

'I'll get you some trousers, yeah?' Rose said, blushing slightly, carefully sitting him back down on the bed and rushing out of the door.

The Doctor gave up trying to stay upright, and conceded to flop down onto his back on the mattress. Eli jumped up next to him. The Doctor automatically reached up with a weak arm and brushed through the child's hair.

Okay, he thought. Here he was, 2006, with Rose. The cleverest thing to do would be to leave, but he could hardly move, so that put a cap on that somewhat.

The little devil on his shoulder poked his brain with his pitchfork. What harm was there in staying? As long as he didn't talk about the future and was gone before his past self got back, that was fine, wasn't it?

He struggled to remember how long it was until his past self returned. Three days, he remembered. His past self had been gone for eight days, so if he'd been comatose for five days, then there were three days left. His past self arrived at 10pm on Wednesday night.

He could spend three days hanging out with Rose. Three whole days.

This was very dangerous, the Doctor mused. But surely, _surely,_ having three days with Rose could only be a good thing. For Eli especially, who'd lost his mum. Rose could be a motherly figu–

The Doctor's eyes shot open at what he'd just thought. No. Nope. Nope, nope, nope.

He looked at Eli. Eli grinned back.

No, he realised. He was wrong. This was it. This was how things went now. The Doctor did not come first anymore. Eli came first. Despite how much he'd been trying to deny it, inside his heart of hearts, the Doctor knew how this would play out. Jack had been right. Despite the dangers, the Doctor knew he would never let Eli come to harm. Although it was perfectly reasonable to suggest he should find him a safer environment, he'd had him for too long to give him away. Frankly, he didn't trust anyone to look after him properly. Not after what they'd been through.

He was going to raise him, and now he had to think of the next steps. Eli had him as a fatherly figure, but he needed a motherly figure. And maybe that mother _was_ Rose. Not to replace his real mother – that wouldn't be fair – but to act as someone that Eli could think of every time he needed his mum. Someone he'd seen alive and well and not impaled on the wreck of a spaceship in the middle of an interstellar war. Someone who smiled at him and hugged him. Loved him.

Plotting for his companion to act as a mother. That was a new one.

'Hey,' he whispered to Eli. 'I dunno how you did it, but thank you. You've saved my life. More than once.'

Rule eight. Occasionally, they may somehow manage to take you back in time to visit a former companion you've been missing. In these cases, just go with it. Because even a lonely old Time Lord can have a family, even if it's a very strange one.


	10. Playdays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor tries to get used to his new situation without revealing Rose's fate to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuum! Thanks for sticking with me :D

The Doctor’s mobility was very limited, but by the time evening came he was able to walk short distances and make cups of tea. After he’d managed to get dressed, he went to the bathroom to have a shave. Now he was stood at the bathroom sink of the Tyler flat, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

The last time he'd been in this position, it had been just after he'd regenerated in the interim to New Year’s. He’d been a little bit weak and somewhat vulnerable in the days after his regeneration, so Jackie, Mickey and Rose had taken it upon themselves to look after him in his ‘moulding’ period, as he dubbed it – the time it took for him to get used to his new body. And within those few days, he’d cut himself shaving at this sink a few times.

Of course, he couldn’t tell as he lived with his face everyday, but he could now see Rose was right. Compared to how he’d last looked in this mirror, he was so much older. He’d become a little less pale, and a tad more angular. His eyes looked less Bambi-like; now a bit more piercing. His face was altogether far more lived in. And it wasn’t just that. It was his soul.

‘Daddy, Daddy,’ a voice suddenly interrupted his thought trail. He looked around to see Eli running into the bathroom. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Shaving,’ the Doctor replied, resuming what he had come to do and opening the packet of disposable razors Jackie had bought for him.

‘Why?’

‘Need to get rid of all my face fur,’ he clarified, pointing at his stubbled jaw. ‘Tell you what, d’you want a go?’

Eli giggled and nodded. The Doctor gestured for him to sit on the closed toilet, and took the shaving cream. He squirted some onto his fingers and rubbed it over Eli’s jaw, who couldn’t stop giggling.

‘Don’t swallow it; it doesn’t taste nice. Believe me, I tried,’ the Doctor told him, and proceeded to cover his own jaw. He then ran his sonic over the edge of a razor to blunt it, and handed it to Eli before taking his own.

‘Right, now run it down your jaw, nice, gentle strokes,’ he said, and demonstrated. ‘Do what I do.’

Eli copied him, all the shaving cream coming off as he worked.

‘Yes, nicely done,’ the Doctor enthused. ‘Now, against the grain.’

‘What grain?’ Eli asked.

‘Oh, just pretend you have it,’ the Doctor said, continuing work on his own face and rinsing away the cream. Eli began to try and shave his lips. ‘Aww, no, don’t do that,’ the Doctor said, brushing at Eli’s lips with his thumb to get rid of the cream, before resuming shaving. ‘There are only a few species in the universe that have hairy lips, and you’re not one of them.’

‘Who’s got hairy lips?’ Eli asked, still shaving.

‘Well, for one thing, the people of Yorax minor, and of course …’ – he caught sight of someone in the mirror, heading to the bathroom – ‘... Jackie!’ he said happily.

‘Are you … oh!’ Jackie said as she entered, clearly spotting Eli with his face full of shaving cream. ‘Aww, sweetheart, you bein’ a big boy?’

‘Yeah!’ Eli said happily as the Doctor washed both their faces and rubbed Eli’s head with the towel vigorously enough to make his hair stand on end.

Eli laughed again, his eyes lighting up. ‘Daddy!’ he moaned.

‘What? Just making sure you’re dry,’ the Doctor told him. ‘Unless you want a … _bath.’_

‘Nooooo!’ Eli roared, and ran out of the door with his arms flailing.

The Doctor smirked and resumed drying himself off.

Jackie paused, for a moment just looking at him.

‘Jackie?’ the Doctor wondered, checking himself in the mirror.

‘Nothin’,’ she said. ‘D’you want dinner, sweetheart?’

‘Yeah, please.’

‘I’m makin’ spaghetti bolognese, if you’re all right with that?’

‘Fine by me, thank you.’

‘Okay,’ she said, and turned to leave when she suddenly stopped. ‘You aren’t lyin’, are ya?’

The Doctor frowned, looking at her. ‘What?’

‘Eli,’ she said. ‘He just looks _too much_ like you, and those blue eyes … like ... and you act like … like you’re a dad.’

‘The fact he looks like me is absolutely just pure coincidence,’ the Doctor assured her. ‘And I _have_ to act like a dad, because right now, he’s my son.’

‘You would tell me though, wouldn’t ya?’

‘Tell you what?’

‘If he was my grandson?’

The Doctor whirled around to her, panicking. ‘He’s not … he’s not your grandson.’

‘But you’d tell me?’

‘Jackie, don’t even … No,’ he said, struggling to form words through the shock. ‘He’s nothing to do with you. There is absolutely no genetic strand from you in Eli. None. Nadda. Zero. Zip. Zilch. He’s an _orphan.’_

‘All right,’ she said, and left, leaving the Doctor feeling a little bewildered.

* * *

It had been _so_ long since he’d had adult company and been in a domestic setting that it took a while for him to adjust. The entire concept of having dinner in front of the TV was so remote and obscenely human that it really took some effort on his part to appear normal. Even eating spaghetti bolognese was something he hadn’t done in a while. He almost found he was enjoying it. He even sat for fifteen minutes through Coronation Street without making sarcastic comments. Eli had given up and gone to play very quickly, but the Doctor had stayed, just content to sit next to Rose.

When Jackie went to make tea at the advert break, Rose turned to him.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

He smiled at her. ‘Yeah.’

‘You actually sat through Corrie,’ she pointed out.

‘I know,’ he said, and laughed. ‘First time I’ve done that.’

She gazed at him for a long moment.

He looked at her. ‘What?’

‘So different,’ she said.

‘I am?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Normally you’d be ready to get outta here, now.’

He gestured at his body. ‘Wouldn’t get very far,’ he said.

‘How bad is it?’

‘I think I’m going to be weak for a while yet.’

‘Well at least you’ve got me, and Eli, for however long you keep him. We’ll look after you.’

‘Yeah,’ the Doctor murmured, and then decided to change the subject as quickly as possible. ‘There’s a playpark here, isn’t there?’

‘Yeah,’ Rose replied, confused.

‘Shall we take out Eli?’

‘Can you make it?’

He shrugged. ‘Let’s find out.’

* * *

The Doctor had never felt so pathetic. Descending the stairs of Bucknall House sent his hearts beating ten to the dozen, he was out of breath, and by the same they got to the bottom he was so light-headed that his head was spinning. There was no point trying to hide it. As they neared the bottom, he leant on the railing and Rose, blinking erratically.

‘Sit down,’ Rose coaxed, getting him to drop to sit on the bottom step of the grimy stairwell. ‘Well, this was a dumb idea,’ she joked.

‘Sorry,’ the Doctor muttered, holding his head.

‘What have you gotta be sorry about?’ she asked seriously. ‘You were in a coma a few hours ago.’

He looked at her, panting for air as Eli began running up and down the steps to amuse himself. ‘Not used to this,’ he confessed.

Rose giggled.

'What?’ he asked.

‘You make such a bad patient.’

'I do?’

'Don’t you remember when you got that alien flu and you spent two days pretendin’ you were fine until you fainted on the Queen of Terbia?’

'Oh yeah,’ the Doctor realised.

'She thought you were sexually assaultin’ her, had us arrested and ordered your execution, but before anyone could do anythin’ you spread your flu to the whole prison, includin’ the guards, who then got sick, and I managed to drag you out and back to the Tardis while everyone was unconscious, includin' you.’

The Doctor laughed. 'I forgot about that.’

'It was only last month for me,’ she said.

'Years ago for me,’ the Doctor mused, and then looked around. 'Eli?’

'Daddy!’ came the response from the top of the steps as Eli popped his head around the corner.

‘C’mon, park,’ the Doctor prompted, struggling upright.

‘Hey, be careful,’ Rose urged supporting him.

‘It’s fine,’ he dismissed. ‘Allons-y.’

* * *

They made it to the park. Eli, with his infinite energy, began to charge around so fast that it was making the Doctor and Rose out of breath just looking at him. Meanwhile the Doctor took a seat on the bench, trying to get his strength back. Rose sat next to him.

‘What’re you gonna do with him?’ Rose wondered.

The Doctor gazed at Eli. ‘I … I think he’s staying with us. As long as that’s alright with you,’ he added.

Rose smiled. ‘Oh, think I’d get used to it. Aren’t you worried, though?’

‘What about?’

‘Well, our life ain’t exactly safe,’ she pointed out.

‘I know,’ the Doctor murmured. He fell silent as Eli continued to charge around the park.

‘What are you thinkin’?’ Rose asked.

He looked at her. A few years ago he would have just brushed her off with some ranting, distracting comment. But how could he do that now? After everything that happened. All those years of regrets. The things he’d wished he’d said and done. This was his chance to finally drop the shields and share a little piece of himself with her. It was his last chance. After all, he’d never see her again after this.

He swallowed, and began. ‘It’s just … he’s been with me for so long, now. He’s looked after me. He saved my life. He’s given me a direction … someone to care for. I don’t think I can give him up. I don’t … I don’t think I can say goodbye again. I’m getting tired of goodbyes.’

Rose frowned. ‘Again?’ she echoed.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said quickly. ‘But … he calls me Daddy, and he loves me, and I ...’

He trailed off.

Rose hugged him. ‘You love him,’ she finished.

The Doctor didn’t answer that.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, still hugging him. ‘I dunno how I am in the future, but whatever you want I’d be fine with.’

‘Thank you,’ was all he managed.

She paused, pulling back for a moment. ‘You're so different.’

‘So you said,’ he joked.

She smiled. ‘It's weird. I thought Time Lords didn’t age like humans? Y’know, like, physically?’

‘Oh, we age,’ he confirmed. ‘Just slower. Why?’

‘You‘re just so much older,’ she told him. ‘You _look_ so much older. But it’s not only your body, it’s like … like you’ve grown up, in your head, yeah?’

‘Are you saying I was immature?’ the Doctor joked, and immediately realised what he’d done. It was like a reflex. He was trying to change the subject. Best form of defence. It was his safe place when things got a bit too emotionally close to him.

She laughed. ‘Yeah. _Really_ immature.’

He smiled. ‘Probably,’ he conceded.

Rose gazed at him a little longer.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘There’s somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me,’ she said.

‘There are many things I’m not telling you,’ he replied honestly. ‘I’m from your future.’

‘No, but it’s … where am I sunbathin’, again?’

‘Porquai Minor.’

‘... It was Gancha Four, earlier,’ she whispered.

‘Gancha Four is a district of Porquai Minor,’ he said without hesitation.

There was that lying thing again. Thankfully the silence didn't become too long as Eli charged back over.

'Daddy, come and play,’ he begged.

'I can't, I'm sorry,’ the Doctor replied.

'Cos you're sick?’

'Yeah, cos I'm sick,’ the Doctor confirmed.

'S’ok,’ Eli said. 'I’ll run really slow, I promise.’

‘I can't, Eli,’ the Doctor insisted.

'Nah, he will,’ Rose said suddenly.

'He will?’ the Doctor echoed.

'Yeah,’ she said, and got up. ‘Eli, ou can pick the game, I can run, and ... um, your Daddy can be referee. How’s that?’

‘Okay!’ Eli said happily.

‘What d’you wanna play?’ she asked.

‘Um, I dunno.’

Rose laughed. ‘Okay. How about … What’s The Time Mr Wolf?’

Eli frowned. ‘I dunno how to play that.’

‘I’ll teach you,’ she said, and looked at the Doctor. ‘You know that, yeah?’

‘Know it? I played it with Edward the Sixth for eight hours straight,’ the Doctor said, grinning.

Rose rolled her eyes.

* * *

Despite her protests, the Doctor felt slightly awkward about taking Rose’s bed now he wasn’t in a coma, and Eli had insisted on staying with him, so they both ended up on a makeshift bed in the sitting room.

The Doctor was weak enough to sleep almost immediately, but that came to an abrupt halt when his brain turned against him and decided to give him a second-by-second account of the Fall of Arcadia in a fully-fledged nightmare. He jerked awake, his hearts racing, and for a moment just laid there, shaking, when he suddenly realised someone was crying.

Eli.

‘Eli,’ the Doctor said quickly and softly, turning to the boy. 'Eli?’

'Daddy,’ he sobbed, shaking under the duvet. 'I'm sc-scared, Daddy.’

'Nightmare?’

'Yeah …’

'It’s okay,’ the Doctor said, holding him. ‘What was it about?’

Eli seemed to ignore the question. 'I w-want Footsie.’

'Footsie?’ the Doctor asked, confused. He suspected Eli didn’t mean a UK stock exchange index, but the boy had surprised him before. 'What's that?’

'Rose g-gimme Footsie to sleep with s-so I didn't get n-nightmares.’

A toy, the Doctor realised. 'Okay, let me find Footsie. I’ll be back in a minute.’

He got up and moved to Rose's room, daring to edge open the door. She was fast asleep, so he crept inside and commenced looking for some kind of soft toy. At least, he assumed it to be a soft toy.

It wasn’t long until his foraging stirred Rose, who nearly screamed at the sight of a shadowy, tall man in her room.

‘Sorry!’ he whispered quickly. ‘Me.’

‘What're you doin’?’ she asked, sinking back under the covers, her hair a mess.

'Eli wants, um, Footsie?’

‘Oh ... Oh!’ she realised eventually through her half-asleep state, and pointed to the end of the bed. ‘Purple bear.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, moving to the area. ‘Go back to sleep.’

She ignored him. ‘Is Eli okay?’

‘He’s just had a nightmare,’ the Doctor told her, still searching. ‘Go back to sleep.’

‘He has nightmares every night.’

‘He’s straight out of a war. Who knows what he might have seen? Go back to sleep.’

Rose gazed at him. ‘What d’you think he’s seen?’

‘Dunno. I know that in the Hax war, each side started dropping spare bombs on civilian populations. And the ship I found him in had been shot down. Go back to sleep.’

‘Oh my god,’ Rose whispered, horrified. She got up and moved to him, locating Footsie almost immediately. It was a slightly bedraggled purple bear with massive feet. ‘My nightmare bear,’ Rose explained as she handed Footsie over. ‘Mum told me when I was a kid that this bear stopped all nightmares. So I gave her to Eli and told him the same thing.’

The Doctor grinned at that. ‘Thanks,’ he replied. ‘Nighty night.’

‘Night,’ Rose said, and climbed back into bed.

The Doctor closed the door, and went back to Eli. The boy was still in the makeshift bed, crying.

‘Hey,’ the Doctor said, handing him Footsie. Eli clung onto the bear for dear life. The Doctor slipped back under the covers and held him again, brushing back his hair. After a while he calmed down, and went back to sleep without a fuss, hugging Footsie close.

Rule nine, the Doctor pondered as he sank back to sleep. War orphans had a lot of nightmares, but so did Time Lords. He was really going to have to get his own nightmare bear. They really looked like they worked.


	11. Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor learns things about Rose that he never knew, before Eli explains just what he’s seen.

It was only about eight hours later that the Doctor found himself sitting next to piles of shopping bags in a hairdresser’s in Westfield Shopping Centre, struggling to breathe.

Although he’d had some clothes for the boy, they were very limited, so Jackie had insisted that Rose take Eli shopping, as well as getting him a haircut. The Doctor had hardly wanted to be stuck inside the flat with Jackie all day, so he had gathered some strength and left with Rose and Eli to the shopping centre, only stopping in the TARDIS to find something to wake him up a little bit.

Rose had taken command of the venture as they hit the Tube, and the Doctor had just resigned to let her do it. He wasn’t a frequent user of public transport, besides, she seemed to enjoy the newfound responsibility. In the end he’d just kept a good hold of Eli’s hand and followed Rose through the throngs of crowds, trying not to knock his bad hand against anything.

Eli had been utterly bewildered. He’d clearly never seen anything like it. To the Doctor’s absolute delight, he had been embracing the 21st human culture with relish, by saying hello in English to everyone he saw and making an effort to try and understand the system by asking the Doctor and Rose a lot of questions. Even when they’d emerged out of Shepherd's Bush station he was again fascinated by the cars passing by; asking how they worked. He didn’t know what shops were, and had even caused Rose to donate to charity when he’d tried to engage in conversation with a street collector.

The Doctor had, quite literally, taken a backseat in Debenhams, just watching Rose and Eli run around trying to find the boy outfits. They’d eventually emerged with two loaded shopping baskets, which the Doctor had purchased with a wave of the psychic paper. He wasn’t exactly sure what was written on it, but he assumed he was now somehow the owner of Debenhams, as well as Tesco and Mothercare.

It was then that the Doctor started flagging. But he put on a good show and dutifully followed his motley family to the hairdressers, Supercuts. As Rose and Eli had discussed hairstyles and Eli had picked one, the Doctor realised just how much the day had taken out of him and found the nearest seat. By the time Eli’s hair was done, he was struggling to breath slightly.

‘Doctor, what d’you think?’ Rose asked as she and Eli found him in the waiting area.

He looked at Eli. The boy’s hair was considerably shorter, in a cute little faux-hawk. Up until this point, the Doctor realised, the only thing that had really separated him and Eli was Eli’s long, messy, slightly cow-licked hair. The boy with his new haircut was now basically a three-and-a-half foot version of the Time Lord. ‘Aww, hey,’ the Doctor said tiredly. ‘You _do_ have a forehead.’

Eli giggled, but Rose frowned. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘Fine,’ he murmured.

‘You’ve gone all glaze-y,’ Rose said, taking hold of his chin to force him to look at her, briefly searching his eyes.. ‘C’mon Eli, let’s get him home.’

* * *

 

‘Oh, sweetheart, you look so handsome!’ Jackie cooed as soon as the Doctor, Rose and Eli entered the flat. For a moment and with internal horror, the Doctor thought she was talking to him, before he remembered that he had a cute four-year-old in constant tow, now.

The cute four-year-old in question bounded straight up to Jackie for a hug as the Doctor sank onto the sofa for fear of his legs giving way. Rose sat down next to him as Jackie talked to Eli.

‘All right?’ she asked the Doctor.

‘Yeah, bit tired,’ he said honestly.

‘Get some sleep,’ she said.

The Doctor shook his head. The very last thing he wanted to do with his final two days with Rose was waste it being asleep. ‘I’m fine, honest,’ he told her, smiling.

‘Seriously take a nap,’ Rose implored. ‘You look so tired.’

‘M’fine,’ he claimed.

She sighed a little. ‘Okay. Cup of tea?’

‘Molto bene,’ the Doctor replied, smiling.

Rose grinned. ‘Back in a sec.’

* * *

 

The Doctor woke up with a jerk, and found himself back in Rose’s room. He internally cursed himself. He’d fallen asleep. He could he have fallen asleep?

The bedside clock said it was 6:30pm, and he could hear the television going in the other room, along with Jackie, Rose and Eli chatting. He’d been asleep for four hours. While Rose had been here, he’d been _asleep._

He tried to get up, but to his complete surprise his muscles suddenly exploded with pain and he yelped. He quickly realised that they were so stiff that he couldn’t actually move them.

It didn’t take long until Rose popped her head in the door. ‘Was that you?’ she asked.

‘You mean the strangled yelp of pain? Yeah, that was me,’ the Doctor confirmed.

‘What’s up? she asked, moving to the bed.

'I can't move,’ the Doctor groaned. 'I've seized up.’

‘You really shouldn't have come with us today,’ Rose mused.

'Probably not,’ the Doctor grunted. 'Bit late now.’

'Okay, hold on, lemme get something,’ she said, and disappeared out of the room.

The Doctor groaned, trying to move again, but he couldn’t. He’d never felt so helpless as all he could do back lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling until Rose came back with a tube of something.

‘Where does it ache?’ she asked.

‘All over,’ the Doctor hissed. ‘Trapezii, deltoids and infraspinati are probably the worst, though.’

‘The what?’

‘Back and shoulders,’ he amended.

‘Okay, just gonna turn you over, sorry.’ She took hold of him and guided him to roll over to push him on his front. He couldn't help but let out a whine as his aching muscles protested, but he tried to keep it as quiet as possible.

‘Sorry,’ she said before she sat herself beside him.

'What are you doing?’ the Doctor asked.

‘Heat rub, might help,’ she said, and proceeded to rub some into the back of his neck. The Doctor was about to protest, but after a few moments he realised he didn’t particularly want her to stop.

‘Oh, that’s … ah,’ he managed.

‘That all you’ve got?’ she asked seriously, rubbing down under his shirt collar to get the heat rub over his shoulders. ‘I did two months of a massage course at college, didn’t finish it, but hey, I rubbed a few people.’

‘Rose Tyler, masseuse,’ he mused, grinning. ‘I never knew.’

‘Yeah, well, I never said,’ she replied, continuing.

‘You could’ve told me.’

‘You never asked.’

‘Um … Why would I ask you if you were ever a masseuse?’

‘If you wanted a massage ...?’ she said, and laughed, pulling up the back of his shirt to spread it a bit more over his back. He barely noticed. ‘Okay, c’mon, it doesn’t really come up in normal conversation with you, yeah? It’s like, “oh look, a Dalek! By the way, Doctor, did I ever tell you I once massaged this old man who had savage foot fungus?”.’

The Doctor laughed, despite the fact his chest was still seized up. ‘You … massaged an old man with foot fungus? I bet he was grateful.’

‘Oh yeah,’ she replied. ‘Asked if I could do his backne next, and I was outta there.’

He laughed again. ‘What else don’t I know about you?’

‘Like college stuff?’

‘Sure.’

‘I did hairdressin’ for a bit. Quit that when I had this client with snowglobe-kinda dandruff. Then I tried childcare, and this weird one who kept pickin’ his nose threw up all over me and giggled. So I quit that.’

He laughed yet again. ‘I didn’t know any of this.’

‘Never …’

‘Never asked, I know,’ the Doctor completed. ‘Sorry.’

‘What you sorry about?’

‘I just never really thought about this.’

She pulled down his shirt. ‘Done.’

The Doctor struggled to turn back over. The rest of his body was still seized up, but the worst of the offenders, his back and shoulders, had drastically improved, and he was feeling significantly better. ‘That wasn’t much of a massage, masseuse,’ he mused.

‘I didn’t say I was a good one,’ she joked.

He gazed at her for a moment. How could he have not known that about her? What else didn’t he know? What else had he never asked?

‘Tell me something else,’ the Doctor said.

‘Um, I once set fire to Jericho Street Junior School. Bunsen burner in the science lab. Everyone had to be evacuated and everythin’.’

‘Well, everyone’s done that,’ the Doctor said seriously.

‘Even you?’ Rose asked.

The Doctor paused. ‘Yep,’ he eventually replied. ‘And I accidentally deleted my academy out of time and space. One of my teachers had to get it back, which was difficult because he couldn’t remember it existing.’

Rose snorted with laughter. ‘That’s every kid’s dream.’

He grinned.

‘What else did you do at school?’ she asked.

The Doctor seriously thought for a moment. Alarm bells were going off inside his head but he didn’t really care now. He hadn’t talked about this for almost a millennium. ‘... I had a band.’

‘You were in a _band?’_

‘Oh yes. The Gallifreyan Hot Five. I played perigosto stick.’

Rose laughed joyfully. ‘I don’t believe that.’

‘It’s true,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘The Academy closed us down though.’

‘Too “out there”?’

‘Nah, I think we were just rubbish,’ he conceded. She laughed yet again. It felt good, talking with her about this. ‘Go on, ask me anything,’ he invited.

‘All right. Did you have a girlfriend in school?’

‘Yes,’ he replied honestly. ‘Well, sort of. Maybe. I dunno, it was a mutual thing. She was called Ruath. Among other things, we re-introduced cats into Gallifrey’s ecosystem.’

‘God, you’re _so_ weird,’ Rose said, unable to stop laughing, which caused him to laugh too. ‘Okay, got another question.’

‘Go for it,’ he invited, still smiling.

‘... When did I die?’

They both fell silent. No one was laughing now.

‘You’re not dead,’ the Doctor managed.

‘I’m not stupid,’ Rose replied. ‘We you first saw me you looked at me like you …like you thought you were seeing my ghost. You do loads of stupid domestic things like watchin’ Corrie and goin’ shoppin’ and there’s no way you would do that ... unless it was to spend time with me. You open up about yourself to me, like you’ve never done before. You said about sayin’ good byes all the time. I’m dead, aren’t I?’

‘You aren’t dead. I _promise_ you, you aren’t dead,’ the Doctor insisted.

‘Then what? Cos I know I’d never leave you, so what gives? Where am I? Cos I’m not sunbathin’, I know that much.’

‘You _are,’_ the Doctor stressed.

‘No, I’m not, cos I don’t like sunbathin’. Where _am_ I?’

He looked straight into her eyes. ‘Rose, you aren’t dead. You are in Gancha Four on Porquai Minor. You’re having a great time.’

‘What did we do before I went sunbathin’?’ Rose asked suddenly.

The Doctor didn’t hesitate. ‘We went to Brighton Pier. We went on all the amusements and you nearly gave me whiplash on the dodgems because you were crashing into me so hard. Then we discovered that the pier had been infested by a shapeshifting race called the coulronites that take the form of clowns, and we had to confront the leader, which was this massive coulronite, in the Horror Hotel. Once that was done, we got some fish and chips, ate on the seafront and watched the sunset.’

It was another lie, but it was a well-crafted lie, the Doctor thought. Because he would have taken her to Brighton Pier, next. And those things _probably_ would have happened, according to his track record. It was how he had imagined it for all these years.

To his relief, she looked comforted at that. ‘I still don’t get why I’m sunbathin’.’

‘People change,’ he replied.

She thought about that, considering him. ‘Yeah, I guess they do.’

Silence.

‘I want to get up,’ the Doctor said.

She obligingly hauled him to sitting position as he emitted a long groan.

‘Hope you like The X Factor cos that’s what Mum’s watchin’,’ Rose said.

The Doctor groaned again, but this time, not in pain.

‘That sounds more like you,’ Rose said, laughing. ‘C’mon.’

* * *

 

After a particularly detailed dream about Rose’s departure into the void, the Doctor found himself once again waking up in the middle of the night with quite a start.

He took a few moments just to breath, and looked over at Eli. The boy was sound asleep, hanging onto Footsie. The Doctor genuinely wondered for a moment if he would be able to harness the power of the nightmare bear if he could slipped it out of Eli’s arms, but reasoned that was: 1. A little pathetic, and 2. kind of cruel. So he just laid there, gazing at the boy as he slept. That was, until Eli suddenly began to mutter things. They were non-sensical, but the Doctor got the gist from the urgency in his voice. He was having another nightmare.

‘Eli,’ the Doctor whispered quickly, wrapping his arms around his now shaking form. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got you.’

Eli’s sleep talking rapidly increased in volume. The Doctor made sure Footsie was in his arms, but the nightmare bear didn’t seem to be able to cope with this one. Soon Eli was tossing and turning, crying out.

‘Doctor?’ Rose’s voice asked in the darkness.

‘Sorry,’ the Doctor said quickly. ‘This is a bad one.’

‘Poor little guy,’ Rose moaned, moving forward to kneel down next to them.

‘Let me look,’ the Doctor said, placing his fingers on the boy’s temples to try and see the dream. Immediately in his mind’s eye he saw a host of vivid and disturbing images – brightly-coloured faces and drab places; blood, dirt and bodies.

He drew back almost immediately. ‘No, no, no,’ he murmured.

‘What did you see?’ Rose asked anxiously.

‘War,’ was all the Doctor replied, just as Eli woke up, saw the Doctor and immediately burst into tears.

‘Daddy,’ he sobbed.

‘It’s okay, I’ve got you,’ the Doctor said quickly, kissing his forehead impulsively. ‘You’re fine. It was another scary dream, that’s all.’

‘I d-don’t like it,’ Eli sobbed.

‘No one does,’ the Doctor told him. ‘I know it’s hard, but they’re not real. Nothing is going to get you here. I promise.’

‘No booming?’ Eli whispered.

‘No booming,’ the Doctor confirmed.

‘G’anddad said that b-before it boomed,’ he said, sniffing.

‘When?’ the Doctor asked, frowning.

‘They started booming our houses, and he … he, um, said it was safe in Chono so we went by car to get over there but everyone was trying to go. Then G’anddad and G’andma got out and went to see why we’d stopped and there was a rocket. We went to find G’anddad and G’andma, but the road was really red and there were, um, arms and things on the pavement. I knew G’anddad wasn’t coming back cos I saw his shoes on the roof and he never took off his shoes.’

Rose gasped. The Doctor felt a little sick. This kind of story wasn’t new to him, but it coming out the mouth of a four-year-old was making him quite angry.

‘G’andma’s leg came off and we couldn’t find it. Mummy helped but the car got all bloody and G’andma stopped working.’

‘Oh my God,’ Rose moaned. She immediately got into the makeshift bed next to Eli and hugged him. ‘It’s okay. You’re safe here. Nothin’, and I mean _nothin’,_ is gonna get you here.’

‘My fault,’ the boy sobbed.

‘No, _no,’_ Rose stressed. ‘That was nothin’ to do with you.’

‘He was tryna get me out cos he said I was really important and I hadda live.’

‘You are, but you didn’t make _any_ of that happen, yeah?’ Rose said.

Eli sniffed. ‘I’m scared.’

‘All you’ve gotta remember is that we love you,’ Rose told him. ‘And we’re gonna protect you. You won’t see anymore boomin’.’

‘Promise?’ Eli asked, his voice barely a whisper.

‘Promise,’ Rose confirmed, looking at the Doctor.

‘Promise,’ the Doctor echoed, nodding.

‘Okay,’ Eli said. For a moment he panicked as he couldn’t find Footsie, but the Doctor quickly made sure he had him. Slowly, and with both the Doctor and Rose comforting him, he fell asleep.

‘Oh my God,’ Rose said again to the Doctor once he was gone. ‘He’s … He saw his grandparents get blown apart.’

‘And who knows what else,’ the Doctor agreed.

‘Can’t you … wipe his memory?’

The Doctor winced. ‘I could, but … he’d forget his family. His whole life until this point would be gone. The people that matter to him. That … doesn’t seem right.’

Rose swallowed. ‘But it’s gotta be better than rememberin' all of that.’

‘I can’t make that decision for him,’ the Doctor admitted.

More silence, as they just watched the boy sleep.

‘Forget what I said,’ Rose suddenly said.

‘What?’

‘About it bein’ dangerous and stuff. He’s … Well, I think you’re the best person possible to look after him.’

‘Yeah?’ the Doctor asked.

‘Yeah.’

 


	12. Families

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor spends his final day with Rose.

The Doctor didn’t sleep. He’d done more than enough sleeping for his liking, recently. This was his last night with Rose, and he was going to savour it. 

So as she fell asleep in the makeshift bed, still hugging Eli, he just watched them both. The rise and fall of Rose’s chest; the way her hair scattered onto the pillow in an impossible perfectly-coiferred arrangement; her calm, even expression. Eli’s freshly-cut hair also pressed perfectly on the pillow; his little face buried into Rose; his tiny hands clinging onto Footsie. They looked like a painted picture.

The Doctor was content to stay that way for the whole night, just gazing at them as they slept. 

He was never going to see this again.

Being a Time Lord, the Doctor had never really been that concerned when it came to time. But right now, he didn’t seem to have any control over it. By the time it got to 8am, he realised he had only had fourteen hours left with Rose.

_ Fourteen  _ hours. Then he’d never see her again.

His body seemed to have calmed down overnight, so leaving her and Eli asleep, he got up and went to make some tea and breakfast.

He didn’t even know why he’d started it. He knew perfectly well that although he could make tea, he had probably been away from humans for too long to be able to make any sort of adequate breakfast for them, especially when he only had the use of one hand. By the time Jackie entered the kitchen, he’d only really boiled the water and made a mess of the worktop, now caked in butter and jam.

‘Bloody hell,’ Jackie moaned as she entered. ‘What the ‘ell are you doin’?’

‘Um, breakfast?’ the Doctor tried, shrugging a little.

She sighed. ‘Okay, out the way.’

The Doctor obligingly moved aside, dropping into the kitchen chair. Jackie immediately put two tomatoes and a knife in front of him. 

‘Cut these up,’ she ordered.

‘Oh, are we doing a Full English?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ she replied, and looked at him as she retrieved the eggs and bacon. ‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’

‘Fine,’ the Doctor replied.

‘How’s Eli? I ‘eard ‘im cryin’ out.’

‘Bad dream,’ the Doctor told her.

‘He gets a lot of those,’ Jackie mused.

‘He’s a war orphan, he’s seen a lot more than he should have.’

‘Like what?’

‘Things that no one should see, let alone a four-year-old human,’ the Doctor replied.

‘Poor mite. You lookin’ after him, then?’

The Doctor nodded. 

‘How are you gonna look after ‘im if you can't even cook? Wait. How can you be that old and not know how to cook?’

‘I'll learn. And I  _ can _ cook, just not much human food.’

‘Oh. What do they cook in space?’

‘Different sorts of vegetables and meats than you're used to.’

‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Well, sweetheart, if you're gonna look after a little boy then you'd better come ‘ere.’

The Doctor looked up. 'Pardon?’

‘Lemme give you a little cookin’ class.’

* * *

 

The Full English went down a treat. After the high-energy meal, the Doctor felt a lot better than he'd done for days, so he proposed the idea that they should go back to the playpark. Eli could really enjoy his last day with Rose that way.

This time he was able to join in with a few of Eli's games. He wasn't quite ready for the jungle gym, but he could do the slides (despite his legs almost taking up three quarters of it) and the stepping stones. Eli led the charge around the playground, leaving the Doctor and Rose following in his dust. By the time it was lunch, both adults were absolutely knackered, but Eli seemed to have the ability to metabolise air into adrenaline.

They went to the TARDIS for lunch, where the Doctor secretly utilised the new cooking book Jackie had gifted him. Under Jamie Oliver’s guidance he made a Caesar salad. It wasn’t too bad for a first attempt, he thought. He mentally noted that he should go and visit Jamie Oliver at some point for some tutelage. Jackie was right. If he was going to keep a growing human happy for the next couple of decades or so, he was seriously going to have to learn about this kind of stuff.

He checked himself over the infirmary as Eli gleefully showed Rose all of his Doctor-enhanced toys. The scans revealed that although he’d had some internal damage to his lungs and right heart, it was all on the mend. He was going to be a bit out-of-sorts for a while, but he’d eventually make a full recovery. His Time Lord healing rates were back to normal and the penetrative trauma to his hand and neck had scabbed themselves over. He was doing rather well.

After some more treatment he went to the console room to have a quick investigation. He printed off a photo, put it in his pocket and followed the boy’s laughter to the living room, where Rose had put on the Disney film Oliver and Company. He joined them, dropping onto the sofa and propping his feet up. Eli hugged him.

‘All good?’ Rose asked the Doctor.

‘Yeah,’ he replied, smiling. ‘Getting better.’

‘Pause!’ Eli suddenly demanded, jumping up. Rose obliged. ‘I need a wee,’ the boy announced, and ran out of the door.

Rose shrugged at the Doctor, who grinned. 

‘You’re really okay?’ she asked. ‘You took a while.’

He nodded. ‘I was doing some research. Let me show you something.’

‘What?’

He pulled the photo he’d printed off to show her. Rose looked. It was a picture of a group of humans, and right in the middle was Eli, just a little younger than he was now. All smiling at some sort of family gathering.

‘That’s the woman I found dead on the ship,’ the Doctor said, pointing at the lady holding Eli’s hand. 'Her name was Sarah, she worked for a charity. She was 39.’

‘There’s his grandma and granddad,’ Rose realised, pointing at the two smiling elderly people. 

‘Deb and Emmett, both retired, 75 and 84’ he named them. ‘Seventeen-year-old brother, Troy; 8-year-old sister, Ruth; and three aunts and one uncle, Sally, Lexi, Eve, and Hal, all labourers, aged 40, 38, 51, 50. Four cousins; Irene, Ben, Dean and Cal, aged 20, 17, 12 and 10.’ The Doctor pointed at each in turn. 

‘Where’s his dad?’ Rose asked.

'He’s taking the photo,’ the Doctor said. ‘He was called Jed, 41. He worked in technology. Every person in this photo, except for Eli of course, is dead, including the man who took it.’

‘Oh.’ Rose paused. The Doctor saw her struggling to cope with that concept. ‘Do you know … how?’

The Doctor went through each one. ‘Aunt Sally and Uncle Hal, with their children Irene, Ben, Dean and Cal lived in a town that was shock-raided by gerinax near the start of the war. Witnesses described each house’s doors being kicked in and rooms peppered by gunfire, before the entire town’s infrastructure collapsed in on itself. None of them survived the massacre.

‘Two weeks after that, Aunt Lexi and Aunt Eve’s town was attacked by gerinax. Their bodies were found after the war ended, holding each other in the basement of their house without marks of trauma. Later toxicology confirmed they’d both ingested poison, probably motivated by their relative’s demise. 

‘Three months after Lexi and Eve killed themselves, food and medical supplies were very, very low within the civilian populations of Hax. It was registered with civilian services that at some point in this time, Eli’s sister, Ruth, caught the flu and died. In September, Dad, Jed, took his family to the food bank, but it was attacked by gerinax. Jed is named as being a victim who was killed almost immediately. Eli and his mother escaped, but his brother, Troy, was taken hostage and eventually disappeared, but he eventually turned up in a death pit about ten years after the war ended. 

‘After the food bank, Granddad Emmett and Grandma Deb probably joined the masses who had heard about a place just a few short hours away that was fabled to be free of the war. Chono City. Attempting to save the last remaining members of the family, they got their wrecked car started and got on the road. But there was a mass exodus to Chono City at that time, because so many people had heard about it, and it caused a serious jam. Then, according to Eli, Granddad Emmett and Grandma Deb got out of the car to see the hold-up. Eventually Sarah took Eli with her to go and check on her parents when they hadn’t returned. But the gerinax had heard of the build up of civilians, and threw a couple of bombs down to spite the humans. Granddad Emmett was killed immediately. Grandma Deb lost a limb, but Sarah dragged her back to the car. Grandma Deb bled to death.

‘Sarah eventually reached Chono with Eli, and probably heard about the ships that were evacuating refugees to outer worlds. She was a mother and child combo so she would’ve signed up, and got passage almost immediately. She was logged as boarding Evacuation Ship number 567, most likely thinking she and Eli were saved, but halfway through their journey the ship was shot down by a human warship, apparently mistaking it for a gerinax warship. Its engines failed, it was caught in the orbit of Keela Major, and the ship crashed into the surface. Sarah, with the last of her strength, tried everything she could to save her son. She was killed on impact, but was shielding Eli. She saved his life. And that’s where I came in.’

‘God,’ Rose moaned. ‘They’re just … they look so normal in this photo. Like they’re at some kind of barbecue.’

He nodded. ‘They were just a perfectly normal family who were utterly torn apart by war. This photo was taken two weeks before Sally, Hal and their children were killed.’

'Two weeks,’ Rose breathed. 'God. How can that even work? That's insane.’

‘That’s war at its very worst,’ the Doctor murmured. 

‘Poor Eli,’ she whispered, her voice catching. She sniffed back tears. ‘He probably saw his dad get killed. How did he die?’

‘I think he was executed by the gerinax with a bullet, probably to the brain.’

‘You think?’

He shrugged. ‘I could only piece together what happened to Eli’s family through news reports and forensic examiner reports from years after. But a man identified as Jed was found in the food bank a few days after the attack, apparent penetrative trauma to the head. They didn’t detail anymore. That’s the thing about war. We all know how Hitler died, but what was the name, age and occupation of the first person to die in the Blitz, and how exactly did that person die?’

‘... I dunno,’ she realised.

‘Only the “important” deaths are ever written about. Not people like Jed and Sarah. Not the perfectly ordinary, innocent people caught up in the middle. They’re just not important.’ He was getting angry, so he forced himself to calm down a little and look at her again. ‘Eli probably watched his dad get shot in the head. He saw his grandparents get blown apart, and saw limbs all over the pavement. He went through the sheer terror of being shot down and most likely heard his mum’s final screams. But if I wipe his memory, it’d have to be everything. Everyone in that photo. Everything he knew until I found him. Should I wipe his memory?’ he asked seriously. ‘Because I don’t know.’

Rose stared at the faces in the photo in her hands for a long while. She handed the photo back to him. ‘... No, you can’t. Don’t wipe his memory.’

He put the photo back in his pocket, just as a phone suddenly began to ring. The Doctor frowned, looking down to see Martha's phone was abandoned on the rug. With Rose watching him he scooped it up and checked the name on the screen. It was Jack. Why was Jack phoning him?

‘Whose phone is that?’ Rose asked.

‘Yours, in the future,’ he lied.

‘Who's callin’ me?’ she wondered. 

‘Your mum,’ he lied again, and threw it on the table where it rang out. ‘She’ll keep.’

Rose smiled, though it was hardly a full one in lieu of their conversation. Eli came running back in then, jumping on the sofa between them. 

‘Play!’ he ordered.

After Oliver and Company had resumed, the Doctor watched out the corner of his eye as Rose hugged Eli a little tighter than usual.

There were seven hours left.

* * *

 

They’d returned to the flat at six o’clock, where they ate with Jackie for the last time. He watched Jackie’s latest show without protest, just happy to sit by Rose and Eli. Despite trying to ignore it, he clocked-watched his way to 9:45pm.

It was time to go.

He looked at Rose, then pointed at the clock. She got it.

‘Oh, lemme help you pack up,’ she said, and led him and Eli to her room where she began to put the various toys that had migrated from the TARDIS to the flat into a bag. She also added a couple more of her own from a box by the wardrobe, and gave Footsie to Eli too.

‘You take good care of Footsie, yeah?’ Rose said.

Eli nodded enthusiastically. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘And as long as you have Footsie then the nightmares will never get ya, got it?’

Eli nodded again as Rose handed the Doctor the bag. ‘Guess I’ll see ya in ten minutes,’ she joked.

He smiled weakly at that. ‘Yeah.’

‘Make sure you go straight to that planet and pick me up, yeah? You’re still sick.’

He nodded silently, forcing the smile to stay put on his face. ‘I’ll be right there.’

‘Now go, before you meet yourself,’ Rose said, pushing him out of the door. Jackie met them, and gave Eli a big hug.

‘Good bye, sweetheart,’ she said to the boy, before pointing at the Doctor. ‘Don’t let ‘im mess you around, okay?’

Eli giggled. ‘No.’

‘I don’t suppose I have to remind you that you can’t tell your Doctor about  _ any  _ of this,’ the Doctor said as he, Eli and Rose stepped out of the flat.

‘Oh, c’mon, as if,’ Rose scoffed. ‘Imagine if I did. Tellin’ you that we’re gonna end up adoptin’ a four-year-old human orphan? You’d have a double coronary. Now go.’

He nodded and impulsively hugged her. She placed a kiss on his cheek. He nearly turned red.

‘Um, Doctor,’ Rose began, ‘you can let go now.’

The Doctor abruptly realised he’d been hugging her for a lot longer than was socially acceptable and pulled back. ‘Sorry. Just … thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. Now go, else it’s a paradox. I thought you didn’t like those?’ she said, laughing.

He stopped, just looking at her. For one tiny mind-opening, hearts-stopping, soul-crushing, jaw-dropping, body-shocking, stomach-churning moment, he considered just forgetting it. To hell with the Laws of Time. He could have her with him. He could take her right now. She'd probably accept. He could just pretend her future self was happy sunbathing. He could just take her on board at this very moment and have her back on the TARDIS. Who cared about causality? He could iron that paradox stuff all out, no problem. 

But even as the thought came into his head, it disappeared a nanosecond later. 

'Allons-y, Eli,’ the Doctor prompted, holding out his hand to the boy. Eli took it, and the Doctor, for the last time, walked down the stairwell of Bucknall House and to the TARDIS. He fished out his key and slipped it in the lock, pushing open the door before he briefly paused and looked up to the balcony.

Rose was still there. Jackie had joined her. She waved a little wave. He and Eli waved back.

'Eli,’ he began quietly, stopping down next to the child, 'whenever you feel scared or lonely or want your mummy, I want you to think of Rose and Jackie, okay? Like part of your …  _ our  _ family. On top of your own.’

'Okay. When are we coming back?’

'We can't, Eli,’ he told him honestly. 'But just remember them for me.’

'Why can't we come back?’

'This is …’ He paused, and tried to put it in four-year-old talk. 'We could only come here once.’

'Why?’

‘Because …’ The Doctor sighed as he realised what Eli was doing. ‘You’re doing that why thing again.’

'Why?’

The Doctor pushed Eli gently through the doors into the TARDIS. ‘Get in and get ready for bed. It’s very late.’

‘Why?’

The Doctor rolled his eyes, and took one final look up at Rose. 

Rule eleven. Wait. Had he even made a rule ten? 

Rule ten. Four-year-olds weren’t board games, so stop making rules.

He stepped into the TARDIS, and left the Powell Estate.


	13. Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor lets his friends know he’s okay, and finally leaves Earth with an entirely new sort of companion..

The Doctor and Eli slept soundly in the Time Lord's bed, both without nightmares. When the Doctor woke up, he left Eli sound asleep and went to the kitchen. He had breakfast to make.

He threw away all the baby food, and instead searched the entire food stocks far deeper than he had before for something he could use. He had food from Jimpa to Nai Major, but he'd seldom had a companion who was happy to try alien food, so as someone who travelled with a lot of humans, his Earth food area had been eaten right through. However, right at the back of the cupboard in a different time zone he discovered two packets of instant porridge, half a bottle of milk, and some scrapings left in a marmalade jar. That'd do until he could restock.

After a bit of hard thought, he eventually worked out how to cook it in the equipment he had. He finished making it just as Eli came in the door in his pyjamas, rubbing his eyes and holding the phone.

'Daddy?' he asked, and yawned loudly.

'Yeah?'

'Phone.'

The Doctor nodded, taking the phone and setting it down on the side momentarily whilst he served up the porridge with a dollop of marmalade in it. 'There you go,' he said, and took the phone as Eli started on his breakfast.

 _'Is he breathing? Eli!'_ Jack asked in Haxun.

'Yeah, I'm conventional like that,' the Doctor replied in English.

There was brief pause. _'Doctor?'_

'Yep?'

_'Um, what are you doing alive?'_

'I don't know, I find I tend to enjoy things more that way,' the Doctor replied brazenly.

_'You were dying!'_

'Oh! Yes, probably was,' the Doctor realised, and frowned. 'Wait, how do you know?'

_'How d'you think? Eli called, freaking out, then you woke up and told him to press a button on the console and you both just disappeared.'_

'Oh!' the Doctor said again. The past three days suddenly made a lot more sense. 'Yeah, I'm fine now. Well, mending.'

_'Where did you go?'_

'Doesn't matter. Is that it? Can I have breakfast?'

There was another pause.

'Jack?' the Doctor tried. 'Can I have breakfast now?'

_'Sorry, Martha's on the other line, just telling her you're not dead.'_

'So I _can_ have breakfast?'

_'Get over to Unit as soon as you can before she explodes.'_

The Doctor internally sighed a little, but conceded he probably owed it to them. 'Okay, see you later.'

He hung up and finally got to his bowl of porridge, sitting opposite Eli. He tried a bit. Not too shabby, he thought. 'You called Jack for help?' he asked the boy.

Eli nodded, his mouth full of porridge and marmalade.

'How long was I out for?'

Eli shrugged. 'Coupla days.'

'What did you do for that time?'

'Alphabet,' Eli replied, beaming. 'A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z!' he sang.

The Doctor grinned. 'Nice. What else?'

'Um, that was kinda it,' Eli confessed.

'You were sat here alone?'

Eli shrugged. 'On the phone a bit.'

'With Jack?'

'Yeah, cos you weren't, um, talking and you were really sick.'

'You looked after me,' the Doctor realised.

Eli nodded.

'Thank you,' he said to the child.

Eli just beamed, his teeth caked in porridge.

'Hey. I've got a question.'

'Yeah?' Eli asked.

'Do you want to live with me?'

Eli nodded furiously.

The Doctor smiled. 'Good.'

* * *

'Martha, I'm fine, honest!' the Doctor was protesting as the woman tried to drag him off through the corridor with Eli in tow, sucking on a lollipop the UNIT receptionist had given him.

'You were nearly dead!' Martha insisted as they reached the medical centre. She took him straight to the scanner.

'Martha, I've checked myself already!'

Martha ignored him, pushing him under the high-tech metal apparatus. Eli ran off to go and talk to some UNIT soldiers in the room as Martha buzzed around various terminals between physicals. In the end, the Doctor gave up and just laid there, waiting for Martha to finish her work. She emerged and showed his scans to him.

'Your lungs are damaged, your brain's a bit swollen and your right heart is a little bradycardic,' she told him. 'I need to …'

'... Do nothing, because I've done it all already,' the Doctor completed. 'Martha, seriously. I'm fine.'

'I know you, I'm not letting you just fob it off.'

'It's not been "fobbed off",' the Doctor insisted. 'I've done it all.'

Martha paused, gazing at him for a moment. 'You really have, haven't you?'

'Yes,' the Doctor replied honestly. 'Why's that surprising?'

Martha ignored the question. 'How did you get sepsis? I mean, your immune system is very hard to break.'

The Doctor was a little embarrassed. 'I compromised my immune system with a potent painkiller. It was just a temporary thing.'

'You thought just giving yourself a painkiller would sort you out?'

'I was going to look into it deeper later,' the Doctor insisted. 'I was busy.'

'What were you doing that was so much more important?'

The Doctor's eyes flashed to Eli. He'd been trying to get rid of him. But he wasn't going to entertain that thought now. 'Nothing, doesn't matter now.'

Martha rolled her eyes. 'All right, if you're sure. Just try not to do anything crazy for a week or so, okay, mister?'

'Got it,' the Doctor confirmed, giving a mock salute.

'Oh, did you decide what you're doing with Eli? Because I found this Unit couple who can't conceive and would love to have him if …'

'No,' the Doctor interrupted. 'He's sticking with me.'

Martha's eyes widened. 'Really?'

'Yep.'

'You're adopting him?'

'Yep.'

For a moment, Martha just stared at him.

'What?' he asked seriously. 'You were one of the ones telling me I should.'

'I know, I just … never imagined you'd actually do it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think you'll be okay, it's just, well … single dad of a four-year-old human?'

'I know,' the Doctor said, hands in the air.

'You're committing yourself, you know,' she said. 'You're gonna need to school him, find him friends, throw him birthday parties, then puberty, hormones …'

'So now you're trying to talk me out of it?' the Doctor asked, bewildered.

'I mean, he's gonna be with you for at _least_ fifteen years, and then be a huge part of your life for a very long time after that.'

'I'm not exactly limited on years,' the Doctor pointed out.

'I'm just making sure you know what you're getting into,' Martha insisted. 'He's a complete commitment. He's vulnerable, naїve, and he's going to be completely reliant on you for everything.'

'You just described almost every companion I've ever had,' the Doctor mused. 'Besides, one thing Eli isn't is naїve. I'll work all of that stuff out when it comes.'

'And he's going to die before you. Have you even considered that?'

'He's four-years-old, Martha. He's not going to die tomorrow.'

'But it's coming. He's got a small human lifespan, Doctor. He _will_ die before you.'

'Most people I know are going to die before me, and many have,' the Doctor pointed out. 'I know how this works.'

Martha looked a little sad at that. 'Yeah. But he'll be different to them.'

'I know, but what else am I going to do?' the Doctor asked. 'Eli needs me.'

'And you need him.' She paused. 'You _have_ to be sure you're doing the right thing, for him and for you.'

'I'm sure.'

She gazed at him for a moment. 'Okay,' she finally said, nodding. 'Just … be happy, okay?'

He smiled. 'Already am.'

Martha smiled in return. 'I know.'

* * *

'Why don't you go to the living room and play for a while? I've got some things to sort out,' the Doctor told Eli after the TARDIS was back in flight.

'Okay,' the boy said and disappeared in a blur of speed.

The Doctor turned to the console, tapping away to finalise Eli's room to make it a permanent fixture inside the TARDIS, and at the same time made it a bit more homely with some standard decor that his human companions appreciated. After he'd done that he went to the library and pulled out every book on humans that he had. He read through all of them in double-quick time, making notes on food intake, sleep cycles and everything that made humans tick over nicely. He then looked through some basic learning books and drew up a set of lesson ideas for the next two months that he could teach Eli. He also consulted Jamie Oliver's cookbook and some other books on nutrition, and drew together a basic shopping list. After which, he piloted right back to Tesco.

He stepped in the doors, avoided an old lady with her trolley, and then picked up a basket. He liked to think he knew the drill, now. He dug into his pocket and pulled out the list he'd made of basic human foodstuffs he could make Eli meals out of.

**_Bread, butter, milk, chicken, chips, sugar, salt, pepper, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, rice, cereals, beans, pasta, mushroom, beef, ham, cheddar cheese, ketchup, brown sauce, vinegar, eggs, apple, banana, ice cream, chocolate, Coca-Cola, lemonade, fish fingers, peas, biscuits, mince, potatoes, green beans, carrots, sweet corn, cream, cake, stock, soup, pie, prawns, beef_ **

He looked up, checked the aisle, and began his hunt.

* * *

It took a few trips to get everything he needed since he only had the use of one hand, but the people in Tesco had been lovely about it and he'd had many offers of help. The human race were helpful when they wanted to be.

Once it was done, he transported all the new Earth food and drink into its rightful place in storage. He then programmed the food cupboard to only yield Earth food for a while so he could get used to it, before cleaning up all his Tesco bags and leaving to find Eli.

The boy was contentedly playing with his warping Buzz Lightyear ship, jumping up when the Doctor entered, beaming.

'Daddy!' he cried, running to him for a hug.

The Doctor obliged, and ruffled his hair. 'I've got a great afternoon for you,' he said when Eli let go. 'We'll have lunch, and then I thought we might go to Foamia 12.'

'Wassat?' Eli wanted to know.

'It's a planet where absolutely _everything_ is made of foam,' the Doctor told him, grinning. 'I've always wanted to go there but my companions all laughed at me. I _think_ they thought I was making it up. But I'm not. There is actually a planet call Foamia that's full of foam. Then after Foamia, I'll start your first proper lesson.'

'Lesson?'

'I'm going to teach you lots of things, like words and numbers,' the Doctor told him. 'We'll have a one hour lesson every day after dinner. So we'll have you parsing Shakespeare in Ancient North Martian and analysing paleomagnetic geothermal hydro-diversity in quantum-based biomechanics in a week.'

Eli stared at him, bewildered.

'Or maybe two weeks,' the Doctor added, and grinned. 'Right, lunch?'

'Yeah!' Eli said happily. 'Then the Foam-ah-thing?'

'Yep,' the Doctor said.

The little boy's smile was so wide as he hugged the Doctor again.

For a moment, the Doctor just held him. Due to his utter idiocy in painkillers, he had caused this poor boy to go pretty much alone through days of panic. In Eli's short but chaotic life, the Doctor himself was now his only stability. And the Time Lord had been stupid enough to temporarily take that stability away from him. Before that, he'd been even worse by even endeavouring to get rid of the poor boy.

How could he have ever even _considered_ that?

The Doctor had been so fixated on Eli's part in his life, that he'd forgotten to consider his part in Eli's life. He'd been making stupid rules and treating Eli like a science experiment that needed the application of logic to "work out", but he was a parent, now, who needed to be an immovable rock. Eli _needed_ him to hold onto. It didn't matter how dangerous it got, as long as he and Eli stuck together.

He'd been wandering for so long, but now he had a destination. A mission. A role. The target of raising an intelligent, confident, mature young man that Eli was more than capable of becoming. The little boy who'd seen relentless atrocities held no grudges. No malice. He just wanted a daddy to love, and he'd picked the loneliest man in the universe.

Eli wasn't his genetic son – he didn't have his smile or his eyes – but he had the Doctor's hearts. And that was all that was needed.

'I love you, Daddy,' Eli said.

'I love you too,' he replied, before Eli smiled and left to the kitchen.

As the Doctor got up and followed, he mentally erased all the rules he'd made, and started again.

Rule one. If you're a lonely old Time Lord who is still traumatised by the actions you took in the worst war in universal history, get a four-year-old child and relearn the art of unconditional love.

And possibly a nightmare bear.

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww! It's over. Sad times. As always, utterly bucket-loads of thank yous to everyone who's taken time to read this, and especially to those who left a review! :D It's very much appreciated, I really hope you enjoyed it.


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